


two ghosts standing in the place of you and me

by goldheartedsky



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Attacks, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gay Bucky Barnes, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Past Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Pepper Potts, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-10 09:09:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 61,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15946223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldheartedsky/pseuds/goldheartedsky
Summary: At first there are only glimpses. Bucky’s horrified face as almost a hundred years of memories flooded back into his brain. His body hitting the cold Potomac water. A hand reaching down for him. Darkness.When Steve Rogers wakes up in the hospital after the fall of Project Insight, he scrambles to pick up the pieces of his life after finding out Bucky Barnes stayed at the river’s edge, waiting to be arrested for his crimes.After he brings Bucky home, it’s a fight to keep what is left of their friendship as it fluctuates through the forgotten past and the cracked present, with nothing but trauma in between. They try and hold on as it evolves into something deeper, but can they find strength in each other if they can’t find it in themselves?Can scars ever heal if all they do is tear new ones open over and over again?





	two ghosts standing in the place of you and me

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very heavy fic. It delves heavily into semi-graphic recollections of torture, rape, and mentions child abuse. There is also mention of period typical homophobia. But please bear with me because it does have a happy ending, I swear!
> 
> Dedicated to my best person [nothinginfinite](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nothinginfinite/pseuds/nothinginfinite) because they let me torture them with sad fic for the past four odd months it took to write this. Love you!
> 
> Note: for this fic’s sake, most of the Avengers know about Clint’s family, though they aren’t seen. Also, any Yiddish and Russian translations were found through google and google translator so I apologize if they are incorrect.

* * *

_At first there are only glimpses. Bucky’s horrified face as almost a hundred years of memories flooded back into his brain. His body hitting the cold Potomac water. A hand reaching down for him. Darkness._

_He dreams of Brooklyn nights, out on the fire escape, staring at a city that seemed to go on without him. He dreams of Dr. Erskine’s final words the night before his entire world changed. “Whatever happens tomorrow you must promise me one thing. That you will stay who you are. Not a perfect soldier, but a good man.” Was he still a good man? Was he ever one to start with? How many people had died because he let Bucky go? How many more would because he couldn’t kill his friend?_

When he wakes up in the hospital, he’s shocked he’s even alive. He was pulled from the river. How? He hears soft music playing and can see Sam dozing quietly. He swallows dryly and murmurs, “On your left.”

Sam blinks awake and looks at him with a smile.

“You almost got yourself killed, Cap.”

Steve shifts slightly and groans, pain radiating through his entire core. He puts a hand on his stomach, still tender from the bullet that put a hole through him. The bandages and wraps don’t do anything to numb the pain and he can still pinpoint the stitches holding him together. “How’d you pull me out?” he asks, wincing at the thread keeping the corner of his mouth intact.

Sam looks away, eyes down. “I didn’t,” he says. “Barnes did.”

The air catches in his lungs when Steve hears his name. Bucky. His mind goes blank and all he can hear is Bucky’s desperate words, “ _You’re. My. Mission._ ” Fist raised, ready to complete his objective. Convince himself that Steve was nothing more than tactical training.

“Nobody knows why he did it. He won’t say either.”

Steve is so busy replaying the moments before he hit the water, searching for some kind of answer, that he almost doesn’t realize what Sam says. Then suddenly it clicks. “What do you mean he won’t say? He’s _here_?” He pushes himself up far too quickly for his body to take and grabs at Sam’s arm. “Where is he?”

Steve demands, head pounding. Sam shakes his head, almost apologetically. “I don’t know, Cap. CIA took him when they came for you.” Steve pulls his hand back, chest heaving. “They found him just sitting next to you, waiting to be arrested. Didn’t even put up a fight.”

The IV catches on his skin as he rips it out, blood trickling down his hand as he grapples at the cords attached to his chest. The monitors begin beeping wildly as he hauls himself up, hissing at the fire spreading through his abdomen. “I need to find him,” he breathes, stumbling out of bed.

Sam grabs him as he keels, struggling to support his dead weight. “Just sit down, man. You’re no use to anybody like this. Also, he tried to _kill you_ , remember?” he stresses. “Barnes is the reason you ended up here in the first place.”

Everything goes white and the room spins as Steve struggles to sit down. “I need to find him,” he repeats. “He remembers me. I _saw_ him remember me.” His voice cracks and the pain in his chest might not just be from what feels like half a dozen shattered ribs. “Sam, I _need_ to find him. Please.”

A soft, annoyed, sigh slips out of his friend’s mouth as he throws his hands up. “Okay. I’ll make some calls.” He looks at Steve pointedly. “But you have to stay here until your scary doctor lets you leave. She’s terrifying when she’s mad.”

Sinking back into the bed, Steve nods, pain washing over him. “Okay. Okay, fine.” He watches Sam slip out of the hospital room, leaving him alone with his beeping medical equipment. The blood begins to dry on his skin, cracking as he bends his knuckles. But he can’t help but picture Bucky alone in some jail cell, alone and confused. It’s enough to make his skin crawl.

It’s almost two more days before they let him leave the hospital and almost another day before Sam can get him in front of Bucky. Sharon was able to phone in a few favors and use some bribery to get Steve into the CIA black site where they were holding him. It’s deep underground in the middle of the Vermont wilderness, far from prying eyes. The leaves are just beginning to change, leading a gold path down into the bunker.

“I have to warn you, he hasn’t talked to anybody since he was brought down here,” Sharon says, voice echoing off the reinforced concrete tunnel.

Steve can barely see the cell, no, the cage, when they open the door. Everything is dark until Sharon flips the lights on. Two feet of bulletproof glass, thick steel bars, and Bucky, trapped like an ant under a drinking glass. The brunet sits on the floor with his head down, legs crossed, hands placed carefully in his lap. If it wasn’t for the metal arm, Steve wouldn’t even recognize him.

Bucky raises his head, blinking at the light. His eyes lock with Steve’s and he looks like a hunted animal, pupils dilated with fear.

“How long has he been in there?” he asks quietly, intently watching the other man.

“About an hour after we picked him up,” Sharon replies. She puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder but removes it when he flinches at her touch. “It was either this or drugging and restraining him.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“I don’t think that’s such a-”

“I want to talk to him.” His voice turns dangerous in a way Steve doesn’t recognize. All he cares about is the frightened face in front of him. Sharon sighs and walks him to the front of the cell. His stomach turns when Bucky scrambles back as they approach, like a dog in a cage. His back presses against the far side of the glass, eyes wary.

“There are speakers inside the cell,” she says. “And mics around the base. Just talk normally and he should be able to hear you.”

Steve waits, waits until the woman is out of the room and the door clicks shut, just watching Bucky stare back at him. He sits slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements. “Do you know who I am?” he asks, voice low and gentle.

Bucky’s chest rises up and down slowly as he watches Steve through the glass. It’s minutes before he finally mumbles, “You’re Steve.”

He can’t help the smile that washes over his face in relief. He nods his head, murmuring, “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. It’s me, Steve.” When he leans forward slightly, Bucky presses his body further into the glass, trying to create as much space between them as possible. Steve’s smile falters but he tries to keep as calm as possible. “Do you know anything else?”

The other man blinks, eyes darting back and forth as if he’s trying to access some file he can’t quite open. His tongue wets his lower lip as desperately tries to remember. Bucky shakes his head, dirty hair slipping into his face. “No. No, just you.”

Steve nods, reassuring, “That’s okay Bucky. That’s fine.” He puts a hand on the glass. “I’m going to get you out of there, okay? It might take me a little bit but I’m going to come back for you.” Bucky’s brow furrows at his words but doesn’t back away again. Steve stands and begins to turn when he hears the mic pick up a quiet shuffle.

Bucky is half a foot closer to him now, on his feet, same guarded look on his face. But he takes a cautious step closer. “Why?” he asks, barely audible.

“Why what?”

“Why are you helping me?” Bucky growls, shoulders tense. After 70 years of being captured, he knows there’s no reason for Bucky to trust him, especially after the events earlier this week. But he pulled Steve out of the river, so he knows his friend is still in there somewhere.

Steve puts a hand on the thick barrier, the glass cool under his touch. “Because I’m the reason you’re in here, and I’m not letting you go again.”

It triggers something deep inside the cavern of Bucky’s mind, making the older man freeze, mouth dropping open. His gaze drops to the floor, searching for some kind of meaning in the words. The jumbled pieces of his brain slam together, trying to find the matching pair. And suddenly, it clicks. Bucky’s head snaps up, rage seeping through his veins. He covers the distance in less than a second, metal fist slamming into the glass as he roars in anger. And, just like that, Bucky was gone and whatever Hydra had replaced him with had reared its ugly head.

It’s all Steve can do to keep from jumping back, instead planting his feet and keeping his gaze steady. “I’m coming back for you,” he echoes, searching for any sign in Bucky’s eyes that the man he knew was still there.

But all he gets is a dead murderous stare.

He pulls Sharon aside, minutes later, asking, “Who do I have to talk to about him getting released to my custody?”

Sharon looks at him like he’s crazy and, okay, maybe he is. “ _Released_?! Are you _insane_?” she exclaims in disbelief. “Steve, he killed at least two dozen people less than a week ago, not to mention all the confirmed assassinations he’s carried out.” She looks at him apologetically. “I’m sorry Steve, but you’re not going to get him out of there.”

“ _That’s_ not him,” Steve says, pointing back to the dark haired man curling up on the floor of the cell. “Bucky Barnes would _die_ for his country. That man in there is a prisoner of war, not a criminal.”

Sharon sighs, running her hand over her face. “Maybe when you knew him, but I don’t think the man you grew up with is still in there.”

Steve watches Bucky’s eyes slip closed, cheek pressed against the cold cement floor. He can see the slight shiver in his bare shoulders. The dirty tank top and shorts Bucky is dressed in can’t be warm enough. “Why doesn’t he have a blanket?” Steve questions.

“They thought he would use it as a weapon. They don’t trust him with anything in his cell.”

He can feel his jaw clench at her words. Bucky had traded out one captor for another. And Steve wasn’t sure the CIA was any less damaging. “I’m going to get him out of there, Sharon. Whether the CIA helps or not, I’m taking him home.”

Sharon pulls a card out of her pocket and hands it to him. “I can’t guarantee you’ll get anywhere with her, but Director Andrews is your best bet to get him out.” Steve takes the card and shoves it in his wallet. He turns to go when she grabs his wrist. “I hope everything works out, Steve. I really do.”

Nodding curtly, Steve forced a small smile and says, “Thanks Sharon. Thanks for all your help.”

It takes all his self control not to look back at Bucky as he slips out of the bunker. If he looked back, Steve isn’t sure he’d be able to leave.

~~~

“Look who finally decided to show up.”

Steve slams the door closed a little too hard, still fuming from the events of the night. He ignores Natasha draped over a couch in the common room. “Where’s Tony? I need to talk to him,” he says icily, dropping his jacket on a table.

“I think he might actually be sleeping for once,” Natasha snarks. “Where were you? Sam said they let you out of the hospital yesterday.”

“I went to go see Bucky.”

She bolts upright, eyes widening. She has a look of fear and anger that he honestly doesn’t blame her for. Bucky has put two bullets in each of them, now, and Natasha doesn’t forgive as easily as he does. “Are you fucking _nuts_? After what he did?” she exclaims. “He tried to kill us.”

Steve brushes off her admonishment and heads up the ten flights of stairs to Tony’s penthouse. He doesn’t even knock, just busting through the door, his usual politeness thrown out the window.

Tony bolts upright, scrambling awake. His hand is already reaching for his suit when he sees Steve standing in the doorway. He falls back down on his pillow, panting, “ _Jesus_ , Rogers. We talked about the whole knocking thing.” Tony glances at Pepper, still deep in sleep. He blinks, looking at his watch. “You know it’s 2AM, correct?”

“Get up. We need to talk.”

The tone in his voice is worrying enough that Tony doesn’t question hauling himself out of bed and finding an isolated corner of the compound.

“You look like shit, Cap,” Tony mumbles tiredly, rubbing at his eyes.

Usually he would say something witty back and they would argue a bit and make up because that is their friendship in a nutshell, but he just can’t. His throat feels dry and his anger pounds like a hammer in his brain as he scrubs his hands over his face. Steve takes a deep breath and clenches his fists to keep them from shaking. It takes him more than a couple tries before he can choke out, “I need a favor, Tony.”

“You know, I’m not really in the business of ‘ _favors_ ,’ but maybe if you-”

Steve slams the other man against the wall, Tony grappling at his arm. He lets go when he sees that familiar look of anxiety in the older man’s face. He knows the reasons that keep Tony up in the night and he doesn’t want to be another one. “I’m sorry, it’s just...” Steve’s voice falters. “I need your help.”

“Okay, okay. Just promise not to slam me into any more walls and I’ll help you,” Tony says, rolling his shoulder.

They sit in the kitchen, over a pot of coffee. Steve watches the steam rise out of his cup, hands clasped around the warm ceramic. “I saw him in that cage,” he murmurs, “and I felt like someone had put a knife through me. I _can’t_ leave him like that, Tony. He’s scared. He’s alone. He doesn’t know what’s happening.”

Tony thinks for a minute before muttering, “Rhodey might have some leverage. They might let you take him if he has a safe place to stay. Somewhere he can’t escape and can’t hurt anyone.”

“Think you can make one here?”

Tony shrugs, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “I _guess_. Might take a week or so.”

Steve downs his cup quickly and says, “You have five days. I don’t think he has more than that.”

Tony finishes in four.

Steve is honestly impressed; nearly the entire 45th floor ends up remodeled into a safe compound. All furniture bolted to the floor, reinforced windows, dual biometric and password protected entrances. Nothing that could hurt Bucky or could be used to hurt anyone else. Steve walks through, putting a couple personal mementos he’s managed to track down from relatives and the Army. Pictures of him and Bucky as kids, saved by Peggy after the crash. Photos of Bucky in his uniform from the Army. Pictures of the Howling Commandos saved by Jim Morita’s grandson. Sheets the same color as the ones in Bucky’s old room. Old records from Steve’s apartment in DC.

It’s familiar. It’s home, or as close to home as they will get.

“It looks good, Cap,” Sam says, stocking the fridge with food. “I mean, if you ignore the grandpa decor.” He picks up a Mills Brothers album and smirks. “I’m pretty sure my Pops had this at his nursing home.”

“Hah hah, very funny. Your Pops had good taste, at least,” Steve says, putting some books out on the coffee table. He sighs and looks around. It about as good as it could be, considering the circumstances. Dropping down on the couch, he leans back to look at Sam. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing? Bringing him here?”

Sam stops, looking at him curiously. “He must mean a hell of a lot to you, huh? You don’t second guess anything, unless it comes to Barnes.”

Steve runs his thumb over the picture in his hand, the rise and fall of his fingerprint tracing Bucky’s smiling face. “I don’t know. I just can’t give up on him, not like this.” He stops, burning that smile in his mind. “When you lose someone, you try and forget how close you were so it stops hurting so much. And when I saw him on that freeway, it was like I was a kid again.” Steve drops the picture on the table. “I forgot how much I missed him.”

Sam claps a hand on his shoulder, jolting him back to reality. “Well, let’s go bring him home.”

Steve knows how ridiculous they must look, the caravan driving through small town Vermont. Four SUVs, two armored personnel vehicles, and a large reinforced transport truck. The truck rumbles in front of the SUV Steve and Natasha sit in, Natasha watching the trees pass by.

“They really put him in lockdown, didn’t they?”

Steve looks at the redhead, shaking his head. “You have no idea.”

When the cars pull up to the bunker, Steve helps an annoyed Natasha out of the car. “Always with the chivalry, Rogers.”

Tony looks around, unamused. “Not a nature person?” Steve asks with a grin.

“I was born and raised in New York City. My idea of nature is pigeons and rats the size of soda cans. This? Not so much,” he says, kicking a leaf off his shoe. “Where are they keeping Barnes?”

They pass through the same heavy guards as before, winding down the long tunnel into the dark room at the end. Steve flips the lights on and immediately feels the anger in his body begin to burn.

Bucky sits slumped in the front corner, staring at the blank wall. There is an ocean of a dark blue and purple bruise spreading down his neck, across his chest and shoulder. His lip is split and a cut across his cheek seems haphazardly glued together. The room spins as Steve grabs a guard by the collar, growling, “What did you do to him?!”

It takes Tony, Sam, and another guard to calm Steve down enough that half a dozen CIA operatives aren’t threatening to shoot him. “If you can’t pull yourself together, you’re not walking out of here with Barnes,” Tony reminds him as the lead CIA agent comes into the room.

But his chest is still heaving when she holds out her hand. “Director Andrews. We spoke on the phone. Pleasure to meet you, Captain Rogers.”

Steve’s jaw is clenched hard enough to crack his teeth as he begrudgingly shakes her hand. “What happened to him?” he demands. “What did they do to him.”

Director Andrews crosses her arm, turning her head towards her prisoner. “He nearly killed two of my men this morning. They were giving out rations and he grabbed one. Took six other men to take him down.” She looks at Steve, unimpressed. “I’m not going to apologize for his state. He is in custody, after all.” The guards grab their guns, aiming them at the cell. Director Andrews nods at one of her men. “Okay, go grab him.”

Steve steps in front of all them, holding his hands out. “Wait,” he pleads. “Let me go get him. He’s not going to hurt me.”

“You sure about that, Steve?” Natasha asks, eyebrow raised. “He did put a bullet in you.”

“Two,” Sam reminds her.

“That _wasn’t_ him,” Steve insists. “I saw his face. He _knows_ me. Bucky’s in there.”

They reluctantly allow Steve to go in alone, metal restraints heavy in his hand. He lets out a shaky breath as the guards open the armored door. It was now or never.

Bucky doesn’t look at him as the door closes, only curls his shoulders in on themselves, protecting himself from the beating he thinks is coming. “Hey...” Steve murmurs gently. “Hey... Bucky, it’s me... It’s Steve.” He moves slowly, carefully, making sure not to startle Bucky. He gently sets the restraints on the floor and crouches down low. “Buck?”

The brunet doesn’t move, just stares at the wall blankly. Steve reaches out and gently touches the discolored skin on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky flinches, and looks up at Steve like he’s seen a ghost. “S-Steve?” he stutters, eyes wide.

“Yeah, it’s me. I told you I’d come back.”

Bucky all but throws himself into Steve’s arms, burying his face in Steve’s shoulder. His hands grasp desperately at the back of Steve’s coat and he can feel the older man’s body trembling as he tightens his grip. God he missed this. Bucky. His rock. His constant. And he finally has him back in his arms.

Steve smooths his hand over Bucky’s tangled, greasy hair. “It’s okay. I’m going to get you out of here. You’re coming with me.”

Bucky lifts his head, face inches away from Steve’s and he can see every cut, every bruise, every faint scar so clearly that barely recognizes him. He looks at Steve like a caged animal as he sputters, “With you? I can go?”

Steve puts his hands on either side of Bucky’s face, nodding. “Yes, Bucky. You get to come with me but you need to cooperate with us, okay? I need to put these handcuffs on you so we can go home.”

Bucky nods slowly but the light slips out of his eyes. His mind goes somewhere else, somewhere internal, the moment Steve clamps the restraints on his arms and chest. His eyes bulge as he begins to gasp quietly for air. Sweat pools at his temples and he looks at Steve, absolutely terrified.

He runs a careful hand over his friend’s clammy face, whispering carefully, “Bucky, breathe. Stay with me. Just breathe.” Bucky lets out a shaky breath, letting him lead him toward the door. The brunet freezes, backing up, when he sees the guns pointed at him. He pulls against the restraints, trying to break free. “Hey!” Steve yells, grabbing Bucky. “Put down the guns! Put them DOWN!”

Reluctantly the guards all lower their guns and allow them to exit the bunker. Bucky blinks at the setting sun outside. He looks desperately at Steve as they lock him in the transport truck, anxiety threatening to drown him. But all Steve can do is stand there as the doors are shut, separating them once more.

His stomach twists when he hears muffled screaming erupt from inside the truck.

“He’ll be okay, Cap,” Sam says, once they get on the road. “It’s only a four hour drive.”

Steve nods quickly, leg jiggling nervously. Four hours isn’t long but it could be long enough. He picks anxiously at his nails the entire ride, eyes locked on the transport truck ahead of them. He wishes he was in the truck with Bucky, just wishes he could do something more than just sit on his ass.

When they pull into the Avengers Tower’s loading dock, Steve has had his seatbelt unbuckled for a block and a half already. He jumps out, waiting anxiously as the guards open the truck.

Bucky is completely catatonic, eyes puffy and bloodshot. His legs shake and buckle as the guards haul him out of the truck. “Screamed for three hours,” one of the guards mumbles, annoyed, as he drags Bucky out. “Wouldn’t fucking shut up.”

Steve shoves him aside, grabbing Bucky’s arm. “Where are the keys?” he barks at the guards, gently tucking the older man’s hair behind his ear.

“I’m sorry, Captain, I have orders not to release Sergeant Barnes until he is securely in the facility,” the head guard says. “Orders that are above you.” Steve sets his jaw and lets them take Bucky out of his grip and into the building. Bucky’s legs give out halfway to the elevator and the guards all but drag him in.

Sam keeps a firm hold on Steve’s arm, holding him back as they ride up in silence.

Steve scans his handprint and enters his passcode, holding the door as the guards shuffle Bucky in. They drop him on the couch and uncuff his arms and chest. Steve waits by door, arms crossed, waiting for the guards to leave.

“You sure about this?” Sam asks once the CIA guards leave. He looks at Steve seriously. “You can always back out of this.”

“I can’t,” he says, watching Bucky slump down in the couch. “I can’t leave now.”

“I’m just downstairs if you need me.”

He listens to the pneumatic locks close, one after the other, as Sam leaves the apartment. He swallows dryly as he crosses the room. Bucky doesn’t even look up at him when Steve stands in front of him. Bending down, he puts a gentle hand on the older man’s knee. “You okay, Bucky?”

Bucky stares ahead vacantly and mouths, voice quiet and hoarse, “I’m sorry.”

And the aching hole in Steve’s heart grows.

~~~

The bath water is hot enough for steam to cloud the bathroom, but Bucky’s skin is so cold that Steve doesn’t know what else to do. Bucky stands motionless, awaiting instructions that will never come. He tries to be as gentle as he can, sliding the older man’s tank top off, wincing at the bruise staining Bucky’s skin. “Jesus Christ,” he whispers, fingers lingering over the mark.

Bucky’s shoulders begin to shake when Steve slips his shorts and underwear off. Steve freezes when he lets out a sharp whimper, his fingers on the Bucky’s hips. They’ve seen each naked countless times throughout the years but this time is different. The brunet bites the inside of his lip but he can still see his jaw trembling. His body tenses, waiting for whatever he’s been conditioned to expect.

So Steve steps back, gives him the space he’s never been allowed for the past 70 years, murmuring, “Get in the tub, please.”

Bucky responds robotically, sliding down into the water without complaints. The water seeps into his pores, turning his skin a warm pink. Color creeps up his waist, spreading from the waterline. He drapes his metal arm over the edge of the tub, fingers scraping lightly on the floor.

“Can I help wash you?”

And, finally, Bucky looks him in the eye. Steve saw this look exactly one time, on the train in Austria when Bucky had been trapped in the next car, resigning himself to the fact that he was going to die. Resigned to his fate. Resigned to his future.

But he surprises him when he nods carefully, a forced smile turning into a grimace.

Steve grabs a washcloth and dunks it in the hot water, dredging water up Bucky’s bruised chest. The older man hisses quietly but doesn’t protest as he scrubs what seems like weeks of sweat and grime off his skin. “Lean forward,” he mutters, washing underneath Bucky’s armpits. Bucky obeys, letting him scour his back. He leans forward and sighs when Steve runs the washcloth up his neck, hand kneading the tense muscles.

“Thank you.”

Steve pauses, his hand on the side of Bucky’s neck. The older man looks at him through his hair, eyes dark. It might be in his head but he swears Bucky leans into his touch. “You don’t have to thank me for anything. I had to get you out. You would’ve done the same for me.”

Bucky looks away, stare burning through the bath water as he mumbles, “Is _that_ what you think?”

It’s all he can do not to grab the back of his hair and force him to look Steve in the eye, force him to remember him, remember their history. But he settles with snapping, “You pulled me from the Potomac so, _yes_ , that’s what I think.” He grabs a plastic cup from the sink and says, “I’m going to wash your hair now, okay?” Bucky nods unresponsively. “Take a deep breath,” he says, filling the large cup with water.

The moment he dumps the water over Bucky’s head, Steve knows he made a mistake. The older man gasps wildly, sputtering for air as he scrambles out of the water. He careens, naked, wet body cracking against the tile, looking for an exit. He grabs Bucky’s wrist but lets go when the metal arm catches his throat. His head cracks against the cement wall and it’s hard enough to make him see stars. It takes a split second before Bucky realizes what’s happening and releases his grip on Steve’s throat.

The air rushes back into his lungs and he coughs weakly. “I’m sorry,” he pants. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking...” The other man looks at him warily as he reaches out a hand in peace. “Do you want me to try again? I won’t get water on your face, I promise.”

Bucky wedges himself in the corner, defensively, but doesn’t try and run. It takes him a few minutes before he inches forward, crawling back into the tub.

Steve puts a gentle hand on the small of his back. “Scoot up. Lean your head back.” Bucky complies, letting him pour hot water over his hair. Once every strand is soaked, Steve lathers the tea tree and lime shampoo through his long dark hair.

The older man’s eyes slip closed, uneasy relaxation seeping from his scalp. Steve’s long fingers massage through the matted locks and he can tell Bucky wasn’t used to such a calm touch. He wonders if Hydra would just hose the other man off after missions, scraping a comb through his hair, and then put him back on ice. Because this? This was something Bucky clearly hasn’t felt in decades.

“Are you okay?” he asks, jolting the soldier out of his thoughts.

Bucky nods, almost unsure, and this time Steve is _sure_ he tilts into his hand. “Yeah... yeah, I’m fine.” But there’s something in his voice that Steve doesn’t quite believe. Something artificial, something programmed not to complain.

“ _Bucky_.” He says it harsher than he means to and his stomach flips when Bucky flinches. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, rinsing the shampoo out of Bucky’s hair. “Just... please don’t lie to me. If you’re not okay, just say so.”

A drop of water runs down Bucky’s forehead, dripping off the tip of his nose, as he turns to Steve. His weary eyes are glassy as he says, “I’m so tired, Steve.”

It takes almost twenty minutes for him to comb through Bucky’s hair, picking through the knots carefully. He puts Bucky in a t-shirt and sweatpants, soft material stretching across the other man’s skin. “We put your bed in here,” he says as Bucky pads into the bedroom.

The brunet picks up a picture off the bedside table and stares at it, trying to remember that moment in time. Steve had lifted it from the Smithsonian after he had been unfrozen, furious they had even tried to use it in the exhibit. It showed the soldier in his uniform, the day before he had shipped out to Europe, stretched across a park bench, smiling up at him behind the camera. The calm before the storm. Bucky flips the picture around to show Steve. “This is me?”

Steve sits on the edge of the bed and smiles softly. “That was right before you left.”

“I look... different...”

“You look happy. You _were_ happy.” Bucky gazes back at the picture, like he’s unsure what happiness even means at this point. He sets the photo down and crawls into bed. Pulling the blanket high up over his shoulders. “I’ll be on the couch if you need me,” Steve says, turning down the lights. Bucky doesn’t answer him, only rolls over to face the wall.

It’s barely three hours before Bucky begins screaming, Steve bolting awake and off the couch. He races into Bucky’s room to find the older man on the floor in the corner, with his hands over his ears. He screams hysterically, low voice straining with fear. Bucky’s eyes are open but Steve can tell he’s not here. Physically, yes, but his mind has tunneled into the toxic memories 70 years of Hydra control has built.

“Bucky! _Bucky_! Wake up!” he shouts, shaking him gently. He pulls the older man’s hands off his ears, repeating, “Wake up!”

Bucky’s body jerks as he stops screaming, looking around wildly. He pants quietly as he looks at Steve. “Steve?” he croaks, voice cracking. His hands relax but he doesn’t pull his wrists out of the blond’s grip. “What happened?”

He can feel Bucky’s pulse still racing under his thumbs. Heart pounding blood and adrenaline through his veins. Steve rubs carefully over the thin skin on his wrist and says, “I think you just had a nightmare. Come on, let’s get you back in bed.”

The brunet doesn’t protest, just rolls into bed, hands clenching in the sheets. He lets out a shaky breath and curls into himself. Steve smooths a hand over his dark hair but stops when Bucky recoils under his touch. He sighs and begins to walk out, but stops when hears a raspy, “Stay?” echo in the small room.

Bucky’s exhausted eyes peek out from behind a curtain of hair, staring up at him tiredly. “Are you sure?” Steve asks, not wanting to push any boundaries. The older man just nods, inching over in the bed.

Steve crawls under the covers, shorts riding up his legs. The pillow and mattress are too damn soft but after seeing Bucky sleep on the cold cement, he had picked the softest bed he could find.

Their faces are inches away from each other, bodies crammed together on the full sized bed. Bucky’s eyes dart quickly, as if studying each centimeter of Steve’s face, committing to memory the faded freckles, the slope of his nose, the wrinkles that crease his forehead. “We were friends, weren’t we?” Bucky asks quietly, brow furrowing.

His hair rustles against the pillowcase as Steve nods his head. He remembers the first time meeting Bucky, back when he was 9. Some asshole kids had stolen his leg braces and his lunch money and were tossing them back and forth, just out of Steve’s reach. And then came the tall, lanky James Buchanan Barnes to the rescue. A split lip and black eye later, they were inseparable. Steve was at every track meet, every baseball game Bucky played. And Bucky always snuck out to Steve’s house where they would tent the dining table and listen to radio serials late into the night.

Look at them now.

Steve reaches in between their bodies and covers Bucky’s hand with his own. He squeezes tightly, reassuringly, and whispers, “I missed you _so much_. You know that, right?”

Bucky nods, exhausted eyes finally slipping shut.

~~~

A couple days after Bucky’s return, a children’s hospital fundraiser asks Steve to come make an appearance in his gear and he is more than willing to oblige. He asks an annoyed Sam to pick him up a couple things from the store, hoping to help Bucky ease through his first time alone.

“You sure, Cap?” Sam asks, raising an eyebrow at the list. “This doesn’t seem like the type of thing Barnes is into.”

“You know that we _both_ went to art school, right?”

“Then _why_ do we always lose at Pictionary? Barton and Natasha have kicked our asses eight weeks in a row!”

Steve laughs for what feels like the first time in a month. “Don’t ask me, Natasha is _your_... girl...friend?”

Sam rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “That girl’s got more commitment issues than anyone I’ve ever met. I threw out the girlfriend word and she almost choked me out, not that I minded, of course.” He folds the list and stuffs it in his pocket. “I’ll pick these up, but you owe me takeout.”

“Thai, right?” Steve asks with a grin.

Pointing a finger at him, Sam says, “That’s right, and not that shitty place down the block. I want that good shit from Uncle Boon’s.”

The door closes with a slam and Steve hopes that this is exactly what Bucky needs.

Half an hour later, he taps in his passcode and pushes the doors open. Bucky’s sitting in the corner, shoulders curled around the picture clenched tightly in his hand. It’s the last one that was taken of Steve at Camp Lehigh, right before the serum. Bucky’s thumb nail digs into the shoulder of his white shirt, leaving an indent in the worn picture.

Steve tries to move as slowly as possible, as quietly as possible, but stops when he notices the uneaten breakfast still sitting on the kitchen counter. Bucky’s shoulders slump deeper when he sighs, the older man looking up at him numbly. “Bucky, you need to-”

“I _know_.” The words come out quiet and sullen, spit out like blood from Bucky’s mouth.

“Come here,” he says gently, helping the older man off the floor. “I brought you something.”

Bucky follows him to the table like a lost puppy, feet dragging on the floor.

“I have to go out for a bit, but I got you these,” Steve continues, laying the bag down. He starts to pull out charcoal pencils, pens, and sketchbooks. Bucky picks up a book and flips through the blank pages.

“What do I do with it?” he asks monotonously.

“You draw in it.” He cracks open the packaging of the charcoal pencils, making a couple small lines on the white page. “See? You can draw anything you want.”

The chair creaks as Bucky drops down, still staring blankly at the empty canvas. Steve recognizes that thousand yard stare. He gets that way sometimes, caught up in his own mind, shutting down the world around him desperately trying to get back to a simpler time. Bucky jumps slightly when Steve puts his hand on his shoulder. “I’ll be back in a couple hours, okay?”

He closes the door, watching Bucky’s emotionless face disappear with a soft click.

Steve _really_ isn’t prepared for what he comes back to.

The door opens and it’s complete chaos. Hundreds of papers thrown around the room, scattered across the table and chairs. Steve picks one up from the doorway, turning the page over. He smiles a bit when he sees himself inked into the paper. Bucky captured the curve of his cheekbones, the hard angles of his jaw, the swell of his lips. He picks up another and it’s a self portrait, Bucky’s eyes dark and intent, sketched out in charcoal. But the more papers Steve picks up, the more his stomach sinks.

They all seem to be portraits, just like the ones Bucky used to draw back in art school, but they begin to devolve, eyes getting scratched out, mouths ripped open, venom dripping from skin. There are Soviet faces, screaming at him from the page. Dead bodies mangled on the page. Frantic scrawls, trying to make sense of broken thoughts.

And then, Bucky.

Bucky, sitting on the floor in front of the couch, vacant stare poisoning his face as he scratches a pen across the page, scribbling black ink deeper into the sketchbook. The black hole grows, threatening to suck him in. A tear falls off his chin, soaking the paper. The pen rips through the damp spot but Bucky can’t seem to stop.

Steve kneels in front of him and gently takes the pen out of Bucky’s hand. The older man’s hand continues scribbling, skin smudging the ink. “Bucky,” he whispers, “Buck, _stop_.”

He snaps out of it, looking up at Steve through a curtain of dark hair as another tear slips down his face.

“Breathe... just breathe...” Steve says under his breath, touching his forehead to Bucky’s. “You’re okay. You’re safe with me.” His eyes slip shut, relaxing as Bucky lets out a shaky exhale.

His skin alights with electricity as he feels a pair of lips press against his. Steve feels his heart skip a beat and all the air seems to rush out of his lungs. The room spins and Steve doesn’t know what comes over him; it’s like a power outside his body that wants him to pull his hand up to Bucky’s neck and force him to deepen the kiss.

It feels so necessary, like it’s been 75 years too late.

But Steve pulls away, seconds later, when he feels Bucky shudder underneath his fingers. The other man’s eyes are still closed, brow furrowed in confusion. Steve sits back on his feet and brushes the hair out of Bucky’s face. He swallows down his heart and says, “Hey, Buck, look at me...”

Bucky’s blue eyes blink open, rimmed with red from his paranoia. Fearful embarrassment washes over his face as he pushes away from Steve, back hitting the couch. He pulls his knees up and curls his arms around them, dropping his face down. A muffled, “Go away,” escapes the prison he’s tried to hide himself in.

“It’s okay that you kissed me, Bucky,” Steve tries. “I know how hard this has been for you.” He sighs quietly. “I just don’t want you to use me as a distraction when things get bad.”

Bucky lifts his head, watching Steve over his kneecaps. “You’re the only person who touches me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Without hurting me.” Steve can hear the aching catch in Bucky’s voice. The painful burn deep down in his chest. “You’re not scared of me either,” Bucky adds quietly, words stuck in his throat. “I just... I didn’t know what to do.”

Steve offers him a gentle half smile and murmurs, “It’s fine. Just... let’s just talk about this when you feel better, okay?”

Bucky nods apathetically and rests his chin on his knees, staring blankly out the window.

“Do you want anything to eat?” Steve asks gently, heading into the kitchen. Bucky doesn’t answer or look at him so Steve putters around the kitchen cooking them both some chicken and rice. He throws vegetables in the microwave and leans back against the counter. He’s still worried he’s making the right decision bringing Bucky back here but then he remembers Bucky’s face in the CIA black site in Vermont and knows that this is the only choice he could make.

The dark haired man is like a doll in his hands as Steve pulls him off the floor and dumps him into a chair at the table. The chairs are bolted to the floor so Bucky’s hip cracks against the table as he’s wedged into the seat. “Eat this,” Steve says, setting a plate of food in front of the older man.

“I don’t want any.”

Steve rolls his eyes and sighs. “You _need_ to eat, Bucky,” he says, an annoyed twinge eating into his voice.

“No.”

“ _Eat_.”

“Steve, I’m not hungry,” Bucky pleads desperately, pushing the plate farther away from his body. “I don’t want to eat. _Please_.”

Steve drops down into the chair next to the other man and pushes the plate back up. “Buck, I know how the super soldier serum works. I am _always_ hungry, _all_ the time.” He can feel his own stomach growling softly. “I’ll feed you myself if I have to.” Bucky freezes for a second before he turns to him, sad, resigned eyes filming over with tears. Steve’s stomach flips but not from hunger. He pulls the plate back, whispering, “Bucky, I’m sorry.”

Bucky’s eyes glaze over as his mouth drops open and waits for Steve to forcefully feed him.

“Buck, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not going to-” He stops, realizing this is how Hydra must have kept Bucky alive. “Is that what they did to you?” Steve asks quietly.

Bucky’s voice is low and numb as he mumbles, still staring blankly at him. “The feeding tube was thick, thicker than my nostril, and wouldn’t go in. Blood came gushing out of my nose and I was crying, but they kept pushing until the cartilage cracked.” A tear slices it’s way down Bucky’s face. “I guess I would have screamed if I could, but I couldn’t with the tube in my throat.”

“Bucky...” Steve breathes.

“I couldn’t breathe in or out at first. I thought I was drowning; my lungs felt like they were going to burst.”

Steve’s eyes sting and he wipes them roughly with the heel of his hand. Bucky’s voice is so cold and lifeless that it cuts him to the core. “Bucky, I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” he apologizes. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Bucky looks down at the table, chin quivering as he whispers, “I wish that was the worst of it.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything, Buck.”

“I was so cold... and I was naked... and they...” Bucky stops, his brow furrowing. His entire body trembles as Steve puts a hand on his arm. He can feel the terror seeping out of Bucky’s skin as he relives the horrors of Hydra in his head. “They... they... and I...” Bucky stammers, blinking bewilderedly. A sharp whimper falls out of his mouth like a brick and Steve is instantly transported to that first night when he touched Bucky’s bare hips.

And then the pieces fit together.

Steve’s blood runs cold. As hard as he searches, he’s not sure if he can recognize the man that dropped onto the roof of the train 70 years ago. Hydra took Bucky, his Bucky, and put him in an incinerator, leaving the ashes on the bank of the Potomac.

He smooths his hand over Bucky’s shaking face and forces a smile that he can’t quite manage. “No more talk of the past,” he murmurs, trying to get Bucky to look at his eyes. The other man warily meets his gaze, another tear tracking its way down his face. “You’re home now.”

Bucky’s voice is dry as he says, “Sometimes I feel like I’m still there. Like I... like I can’t breathe... and they’re going to put me in the Halo again...” He buries his face in Steve’s shoulder, letting out a harsh sob as he clings to his shirt.

Steve holds him tight, whispering, “You’re _home_ now. You’re okay,” over and over, maybe just trying to convince himself.

~~~

Steve knew that Bucky coming home would be hard but he didn’t think it would be this hard. The soldier wakes up screaming in terror throughout the night on the rare occasion he can sleep and Steve ends up staying up with him more than a dozen times over the next two weeks. Bucky slips in and out of his mind, sometimes just stopping and staring at empty walls, sometimes putting himself in a fighting stance if Steve accidentally drops something. Steve tries to get him to look at pictures, watch old film, but Bucky glazes over, unaffected. He doesn’t say it, but Steve starts to wonder if his Bucky is still in there.

“Do you want to listen to some music?” Steve asks, watching Bucky from across the room. The brunet sits on the couch, staring blankly out the window. His chest rises and falls slowly, his hands gently cradled in his lap. Steve can see his fingers twitching, carefully changing positions like they’re tracing some lost memory.

He pulls out an old Billie Holiday album, putting it on the turntable. Soft jazz fills the room, easing them back in the past. “No Regrets” spilling out of the speakers like snow, Steve circles the couch, giving Bucky space. It’d been a rough couple weeks, dealing with the push and pull of when Bucky needed him inches away or feet, but Steve has finally gotten in the rhythm of it all. “You need anything, Buck?” he asks, keeping his distance.

“Water...” the other man croaks quietly. When Steve brings back a glass, Bucky’s fingers clench tightly around it, draining it in seconds. His hand drops to the couch, the glass tipping out of his hand onto the cushion. “More...” he gurgles.

Steve gets him glass after glass until he cuts the older man off at five, muttering, “That’s enough water, Bucky.” The older man freezes, skin tightening around the cool glass. Steve hears a quiet crack before the glass shatters, shards embedding themselves in Bucky’s palms.

He grabs the older man’s wrist, exclaiming, “Shit!”

There’s blood slowly leaking from the spaces in between Bucky’s skin and the pieces of glass, seeping out of his clenched fist. He stares at the injury and the growing pool of red, his body tensing up. “S-Steve?” Bucky stutters as his hand begins to shake.

“It’s okay, just let me go get a first aid kit,” Steve tries to reassure, grabbing one of the square cloths from the sink. Bucky hisses as he gently lays it over his hand. “Just stay here,” he says, hopping off the couch. “And don’t touch your hand, okay?” The brunet doesn’t answer him and Steve slips out of the doors.

Natasha is the only sensible enough one to have a decent first aid kit and hands it off to Steve, muttering, “Honestly, I don’t even want to know but I bet it’s Barnes, isn’t it?”

When the doors click open, he can hear Bucky whimpering, “ _No, no, no,_ ” over and over, having disappeared from the couch. Steve can hear the sharp crunch of glass and the cycle begins again. When he rounds the couch, he sees the slick pool of blood before he sees Bucky, hunched over on the floor, metal fingers digging in the soft skin of his palm, desperately trying to pull out the glass.

“Bucky, what part of ‘ _don’t touch your hand_ ’ don’t you fucking understand?” Steve snaps, pulling his hands apart.

Bucky stares at his hands, eyes wide and frightened, the realization that he had disobeyed orders and the expectation of Steve to dole out the punishment dawning on his face. It makes him sick.

Steve sighs, settling onto his knees. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not going to hurt you. You’re my friend,” he reminds the brunet, pulling out the tweezers. “Look towards the kitchen,” he says, pulling Bucky’s injured hand toward him. He does as he’s told and Steve begins carefully picking out pieces of broken glass.

It’s minutes in before Bucky asks numbly, head still turned away, “Do you know why they called me the Winter Soldier?”

Steve is unsure if he’s willing to take the bait but gives in, asking, “Why?”

“The average lifespan of a Soviet prisoner is one winter,” Bucky recites, as if he’s reading trivia. “I was captured in 1945 and wasn’t given a mission until 1963.” Most soldiers only last a year in prison and I lasted twenty.” Steve can’t see his expression but he can see the slack in his jaw as he stares across the enclosure. “My name was to remind me how far I’d fallen.”

“You didn’t fall, you were pulled,” Steve mutters under his breath as he pulls another piece from Bucky’s finger. “Nothing you did was your fault.”

Bucky turns to him, mouth pulled into a hard line, and says callously, “That’s not true.”

He stops, tweezers paused above the biggest gash, and asks, “What do you mean?”

The tremble is back in Bucky’s chin as he looks down. “I knew what I was doing. Kind of. The trigger words help the part of me that was the Winter Soldier take over. Like I’m in the backseat, trying to get the wheel again. And sometimes it was me but not quite me, like I was just complying so they wouldn’t hurt me again. So maybe I could go home,” he says, voice cracking.

Steve runs his thumb over the veins in Bucky’s wrist, pulling the last pieces of glass out. The brunet hisses as he wraps the wound. “I’ve killed people too, Bucky. It’s something we all have to live with.”

Bucky turns to him, eyes desperate. “I see them when I close my eyes, when I sleep, when I wake up. I can never get away from them.”

Steve moves the first aid kit and sits next to Bucky. The older man flinches when he puts his arm around him. “You can’t keep blaming yourself. You wouldn’t have done any of this if Hydra hadn’t tortured you.

Shrugging off Steve’s arm, Bucky looks at the ground. “Or maybe I would’ve. They didn’t just create the Winter Soldier, they turned me into him. It was always me and I didn’t do a _damn_ thing to stop any of it,” he snaps.

“Bucky...”

“I was a monster,” he growls, fingers curling around the bandage. “I still _am_.”

A single tear drops down to the floor as Bucky hangs his head. Begins climbing back down into the darkness. Steve can see his muscles tense up, preparing him for the mental decent. “No, no, no, no. Hey, Bucky, stay with me,” he says in a panic, scrambling around in front. Bucky’s eyes are glassy, distant, as he stares blankly at the floor. Steve grabs his shoulders and shakes him gently. “Come on Buck, come back.”

Bucky just sits there, frozen.

“Bucky, it’s me, Steve. You know, Steve from back home?” he murmurs gently, trying to spark some kind of light again. He wraps his fingers carefully around Bucky’s wrist, thumbs rubbing lightly over his pulse. “‘Member that time I tried out for the track team? Couldn’t run more than 30 yards but I wasn’t going to let that stop me.” Bucky’s fingers twitch slightly. “But you ran right beside me the whole time, even though you could outrun anyone there. You always stayed with me, even if it wasn’t cool or fun.” Steve squeezes gently. “Please just stay with me now...”

Bucky’s hand begins to shake violently, the tremors moving throughout his body. He begins to come back, looking around like a lost, scared kid. “Steve?” he asks weakly, meeting his eyes. “I don’t want to die, Steve. I don’t want to die.” His face crumples as he repeats frantically, “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.”

Steve shakes him by the shoulders, harder this time. “Bucky, you’re _safe_. You’re not going to die.”

Bucky continues mouthing those frantic words over and over again until finally he stops. Looks at Steve blankly, saying, “готовы соблюдать.”

_Ready to comply._

His blood runs cold as Bucky repeats, even more detached, “готовы соблюдать.”

“No, no, you’re not there,” he whispers, pushing the hair out of Bucky’s face. God, it was just like Austria again, watching Bucky slip through his fingers as he screams into ice cold air. Watching him disappear into the dark abyss of his mind wasn’t any easier than watching him plummet into Hydra’s grip.

“Bucky, please, I need you. I need you here with _me_.” The words burn like vinegar in his mouth, staining his tongue black with his pleading words. He had woken up after 66 years to a world that needed him to fight the same fight he had just tried to finish. But they didn’t need Steve Rogers, just Captain America. Always the shield, always the uniform, never the man inside. But here was Bucky, his Bucky, and he didn’t need the uniform that had sent him away, didn’t need the shield that had thrown him out the train, all he needed was Steve.

And he would give the world just to have Bucky smile like he used to.

But the older man still doesn’t answer him, only shudders violently, frozen in his spot. His chin wavers as he chokes out, barely audible, “Not Steve.”

He can feel his heart pounding in his chest. “Bucky?” he asks quietly, swallowing the lump in his throat.

“Not Steve, please, not Steve,” Bucky begs brokenly. “Please, _please_!” The last two words echo off the concrete, shattering like glass. He strains against Steve’s hands on his shoulders, pushing against an invisible restraint. Bucky screams in a way that he’s never heard come out of anyone’s mouth before and it’s like razor blades down his spine.

“Bucky, it’s me, Steve. I’m okay, I’m right here,” he murmurs, pressing their foreheads together. Bucky’s scream breaks of as he gasps for air, grappling at Steve’s arms. “Shhh... I’m okay, you’re okay... you’re not there. You’re here, with me.” His own voice shakes as he pulls Bucky against his body, the older man’s head dropping against his shoulder.

Steve doesn’t know how long they sit like that, Bucky slumped against his chest, but he’s stopped counting the hours long ago. They could spend a million years together and he would still feel like they’re chasing after lost moments.

~~~

Bucky refuses to tell him anything about the episode, refuses to tell him anything about what triggered him, refuses to talk almost at all for almost a week. Just exists in small spurts of the movement in bedsheets, the clink of a spoon against teeth. Steve has to go out for a day or two after Bucky finally comes out of the bedroom, trying to track down the last of the Hydra agents hiding in the dust of S.H.I.E.L.D. but he doesn’t tell Bucky where he goes. Doesn’t need him thinking about the past anymore than he has to.

When Steve gets up just past dawn one morning after he gets back, Bucky is already awake. He finds the older man sitting in front of the thick floor to ceiling windows in the living room, just staring out at the city. Steve sits down next to him as Bucky says, “City’s different. Bigger.”

Steve shrugs his shoulders. “Eight and a half million people live in New York City now. Have to put them all somewhere,” he says, watching the sun rise over the skyscrapers.

“Are our houses still there? In Brooklyn?”

“No. I’ve checked. Tore them down in 2005.” The corners of Bucky’s mouth turn down in disappointment. Steve thinks for a moment before smiling softly. “But Ferdinando’s is still there. You know that Sicilian place in Cobble Hill?”

After a minute of trying to remember, Bucky asks, eyebrows furrowed, “The place with the rice balls and the baked clams?”

Steve can’t even help the fact that his nose crinkles when he smiles wide, nodding. “Yeah, that’s the one.”

“Can we go eat there soon?”

His smile fades, something darker replacing it. “I’m sorry, Buck,” he mutters quietly. “You can’t go anywhere. You have to stay here.” Steve’s heart races as Bucky’s metal arm clenches into a fist. Bucky fumes for twenty, thirty seconds before his fists relax and his shoulders slump. “Are you okay?” he asks gently.

“How long do I have to stay in here?”

“I don’t know. It’s not up to me.”

Bucky stands up and begins pacing around the apartment. “I can’t stay here,” he says, becoming agitated. “They’re going to find me. They’ll find me and take me back.” Steve hears Bucky swear under his breath as he stands up. He runs a shaking hand through his dark hair. “I can’t go back, Steve,” he says. “I won’t go back.”

He holds out his hands, trying to calm him down. “Nobody’s going to find you, Buck. You’re safe with me.”

Bucky’s steel blue eyes look at him wildly, fear clouding his gaze. “I’m _never_ safe,” he spits.

He grabs the door handle, metal fingers wrapped around metal bar. He pulls mechanically, over and over again, the muffled thud of the lock echoing in the enclosure. _Thud. Thud. Thud_. “Bucky...” Steve pleads, circling him carefully. _Thud. Thud. Thud._ “Bucky, stop!” _Thud. Thud. Thud._ He grabs Bucky’s arm but finds himself ducking the titanium fist coming for his head.

He rolls back, dodging the punches Bucky throws as he comes at Steve in a fit of rage. The metal fist barely dents the floor when Bucky slams it down inches from his head. He kicks Bucky’s legs out from underneath him, the other man crashing to the floor with a growl. He scrambles up, looking for anything to protect himself with. He grabs a book and tosses it at Bucky, who just crumples it like a candy wrapper, pages flying everywhere.

“Bucky, stop! It’s me! Stop!” Steve shouts, sidestepping the novels being hurled at his skull. Bucky tried to grab the lamp but it doesn’t budge. When he looks up, Steve takes the opportunity to kick Bucky straight in the chest, sending him flying across the room. His head cracks against the cement wall and his body drops to the floor with a metallic thud.

Steve’s legs give out from underneath him and he sinks to the floor. Bucky lays limply on the floor, face down on the hard cement. Is this what forever was going to be like? Him having to pick up the pieces as Bucky swings between himself and madness?

It’s almost an hour before the older man groans quietly, pushing himself up. He braces himself on his metal arm and scrubs a hand over his face. “Fuck, my head,” he gasps quietly. “Steve?” Bucky croaks, looking around. His eyes scan over over the pile of loose pages. “Steve?” he calls again, voice hoarse.

“Are you back?” Steve asks, watching him intently. “Are you Bucky Barnes again?” He rounds the bedroom entryway, arms crossed. Leaning against the wall, he waits patiently for Bucky to sit up.

Bucky breathes shakily for a few seconds before swallowing thickly. “I don’t know anymore.”

“What’s my favorite meal?”

The brunet lets out a short, exhausted laugh. “Corned beef and potatoes,” he says quietly. “Your mom used to make us peel them when I was at your house.”

“Are you going to throw any books at me again?”

The other man shakes his head, eyes pinned to the ground and mutters, “I’m sorry.”

There’s a line between ‘ _You should be,_ ’ and ‘Are you okay?’ and Steve doesn’t know where he falls anymore. So he settles in the tight space of nodding, closing the distance between them, and holding out his hand. Bucky takes it, his metal fingers gently curling around Steve’s wide palm. The metal is cool to the touch and he can’t help but wonder if Bucky can feel the burn of his skin.

He pulls Bucky to his feet, the other man hiding behind his thick veil of hair. Bucky’s voice is morose as he tries to make himself as small as possible, muttering, “You should take me back.”

“What are you talking about?”

Bucky’s mouth presses into a thin line as he tucks his hair behind his ears. Steve watches him swallow thickly and it’s such a stark contrast to the warm, confident man he knew so long ago that it feels like a knife going in. “You should take me back to the CIA,” he says shakily. “Or to Hydra. Just... please stop looking at me like that.”

Steve relaxes his face and, to be honest, he’s not sure when he had tensed his entire body. His jaw aches but not as much as his chest. “Bucky... I’m not... I’m not going to take you back.”

“Why not? You don’t trust me. I don’t trust myself.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he says, desperately trying to get his shoulders to relax. “You shot me, twice. Stabbed me.” He thinks about the fading scars stretched across his shoulder and stomach. The blood stains he’s not sure will ever come out of the inside of his uniform. Steve knows it wasn’t him, wasn’t Bucky, but the holes are still there.

“I didn’t want to.” Bucky looks at him the same way he did when Steve first saw him trapped in the glass cage the CIA kept him in, like he’s been waiting 70 years to run but can’t escape his conditioning. Tethered where he is, unable to find freedom. Bucky’s brows furrow as he lets out a small breath. “I remembered you, you know. At least partially,” he says quietly, staring off into the distance. “They were... patching my arm, and I asked who you were. They said I had met you on another mission but it didn’t sound right. I knew you as much as I knew myself.” He ducks his head, hiding from Steve, hiding from the world. “They hurt me for knowing you and part of me thought they were going to hurt me again if I didn’t complete my mission.”

His hands twist troubledly between each other. “When Hydra took me, all I wanted to do was come home. Find you.”

That hot pit of guilt alights in Steve’s spine, burning through his ribs like a wildfire. “I should’ve gone after you,” he says. “They told me there was no way you could have survived the fall. And I believed them.”

Bucky forces a distorted smile, mouth twisted into something dirty as he asks, “Did you care more when I was dead?”

“Bucky, you can’t think-”

“It _wasn’t_ your fault, you know.”

“My shield, my fault.”

It was something that had tortured him for years, before and after he had come out of the ice. Remembered Bucky’s fingers wrapped around the straps, shield held close to his body before it was ripped away from him, before Bucky was ripped away from Steve.

He had blamed himself from the moment that metal handle had snapped from the freight car.

They drift into an uneasy silence, Bucky’s thousand yard stare souring the space between them.

There’s something that has been plaguing the back of Steve’s mind, deep where he’s compartmentalized everything before all he could be was Captain America. Bucky had been this joyous person, fastidious student, excellent athlete, but now he was just a shadow of his former self. And Steve thinks of what Dr. Erskine told him, about the serum amplifying everything that had been hardwired before.

Hydra had preyed on Bucky because he was a good soldier, could follow orders. Was loyal to Steve beyond life itself and they had turned that loyalty into something that could be exploited. Controlled.

And everything had been carefully molded to overcompensate for sorrow he couldn’t shake, the anxiety, amplified by the serum.

Good becomes great. Bad becomes worse. Hollow becomes a pit.

And it’s starting to seem like the only way to fill the emptiness in Bucky is to start shoveling out of his own soul.

~~~

His head is screaming when he wakes up, so he puts almost 5 miles in the pool before he’s calm enough to function.

Steve had always loved swimming, but he was almost never healthy enough to do it as a kid. The last time he had swam before the serum was out in one of the floating pools when he was 11 and he almost drowned after he had an asthma attack underwater and Bucky had dragged him out to his panicking Ma.

Getting used to just being healthy was the biggest adjustment, but Steve would never tell a soul.

He hears the door open as he climbs out of the pool and turns to see Sam heading across the room toward him. Grabbing his towel off one of the chairs, Steve dries his face and hair as he hears Sam say, “You’re up early.”

“Woke up thinking about too much, you know?” he mumbles, wrapping the damp towel around his shoulders.

Sam chuckles but just nods understandingly. “I know how that goes. Best friend troubles still keeping you up?” He looks at Steve pointedly when he doesn’t answer Sam, just sighs dejectedly. “You know, best thing you can do is to get him to open up about everything. That’s why we had group therapy sessions back at the VA. You start opening up about your shit and you begin to realize that your shit is the same shit everyone else has.”

Steve scoffs and rolls his eyes. “ _If_ he even remembers anything, Bucky’s not the type of person to ‘open up’ about anything. Never was, even when we were teenagers. He’d rather pretend everything’s fine, even when it’s not.”

“Have you tried giving him a notebook or something to write in? That way he doesn’t feel like you’re going to know what’s happened and he can still jog his memory and get it off his chest.”

It wasn’t a bad idea, Steve’s just not sure if Bucky will have the energy for anything other than existing at this point. But he relents, muttering, “Fine, but if this doesn’t work, we’re back to square one, I think.”

He showers up in his apartment, hoping Bucky is actually getting some sleep for once. Neither of them had gotten much, to be honest. Steve’s glad everyone has been picking up the slack and has been giving him the time off that he desperately needs to try and piece back together the last person he had left.

After he swallows down a couple bagels, half a container leftover bacon, and a banana, he throws his coat on and escapes to the cold Manhattan streets.

The bookstore has just opened by the time he gets there, slipping through the doors quietly. Steve runs his fingers over the rows of used books, picking a couple non-fiction paperbacks as he goes.

He stops at one book in the religion section and pauses at a worn leather cover, gold Star of David printed on the spine. Tucking the other books under his arm, he pulls the book carefully from the shelf, cracking it open carefully. It’s old, very old, and the pages of Hebrew are yellowing at the edges. Steve tucks it under his arm with the others and pulls eight notebooks off the front rack.

“Morning, Steve,” Mrs. Valencia says when he drops the books at the front counter. “All these for you? Are you writing the next Great American Novel?”

He laughs and hands her his credit card, muttering, “Just need a lot of notebooks, Mrs. V.”

Steve picks up coffee on the way back home, hot and black like they’re both so used to. Even after he came out of the ice, anything too sweet, too creamy never sat well in his stomach. Between the Depression, his mom dying, and the war, it was a rough adjustment to the modern palate of not being poor.

Bucky is amazingly still asleep when Steve unlocks the doors, trying to shut them as quietly as possible. He sets the coffees down on the kitchen and peeks in the bedroom, the brunet’s long body spread across the entire bed. It’s the first time he’s seen Bucky stretched out in his sleep. Usually he’s either tucked tight into Steve’s body or curled up into a ball if he’s sleeping alone. But this is a change, a welcomed sight to see.

“Buck!” he whispers carefully, stepping closer to the bed. The mid morning sun catches the curve of the older man’s broad shoulders and the dip in his spine. Steve thinks about running his fingers down the deep canyon but resists the temptation.

“Bucky, wake up,” he murmurs again, quieter, gentler this time.

Bucky stirs, popping his head up quickly. “What?” he breathes anxiously. “What happened?”

Steve laughs, low in his chest, and shakes his head as he says, “Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to show you something.”

A few minutes later, Bucky comes padding out into the living room, oversized sweatshirt hanging loosely off his body. He’s lost some weight from not eating as much as he should and everything was starting to look too big. It’s been worrying Steve from the moment Bucky had come home. Bucky drops down carefully on the couch and looks up at him, hands tucked in his lap.

“I bought these for you,” he says, dropping the books on the table. “Thought it might jog your memory. You don’t have to keep it.”

Bucky picks up the top book, brow furrowing. He flips through the pages of Hebrew, breath catching at the lines of text. “What is it?” he asks, voice dry. Steve watches him blink, head cocking slightly. “I can’t... I can’t read this.”

“It’s Hebrew,” he says, sitting down across from Bucky. “It’s a prayer book. It’s just like the one you used to have. I didn’t know if you still...” Steve stops as the brunet drops the book on the table. The older man stares at the book uneasily. “I’m sorry,” Steve says, “I just thought it might help.”

“It’s fine,” Bucky says, voice flat. He looks at Steve numbly. “I’m sorry this wasn’t what you were hoping for. I still just get bits and pieces. Like I’m fishing in the ocean for memories with a spoon. Sometimes I can catch something and other times...” He closes his eyes, as if trying to block the noise out. “And other times it’s just Hydra in my head.”

Steve pulls one of the other books out and hands it to Bucky, murmuring, “Then write those flashes down. Maybe they’ll stop being flashes and everything will start coming back easier.”

So they sit quietly, Steve half reading a book, half watching the other man write frantically in the notebook, filling page after page of text. Bucky writes like he’s running out of time, like he’s trying to reverse time, or at least catch enough of it to try and patch himself back together. Steve can’t tear his eyes off the long fingers clenched around the pen across from him and wonders what’s on the pages.

But the more he thinks about it, he’s not sure he wants to know.

Bucky fills two notebooks by the time the sun goes down, starting another after Steve forces a couple of slices of pizza into his body.

The silence fills the hours until the scratching of pen stops.

“Do you remember that time you had pneumonia when you were seventeen?” Bucky asks, looking up from his journal, pen paused on the page. “What happened? I remember something but it’s just flashes.”

Steve pauses, putting his book down. “I remember getting sick. I was out of school for weeks. And then my asthma got worse. I remember you staying by my side the entire time. You would just watch me breathe. But then Ma made you get some sleep.”

“I woke up to check on you...”

He nods. “She said you thought it was too quiet.”

Bucky stares at the page, trying to bring the memories back. He looks up, confused. “You almost _died_.”

The memory is clear as anything in his head. Bucky, sobbing above him as he struggled for oxygen, screaming for Steve’s ma. Bucky, begging, “ _Ms. Sarah! He’s not breathing! What do I do? What do I do?!_ ” Bucky, carrying his frail body, running down the streets of Brooklyn toward the hospital.

“That’s what Ma said. She said I stopped breathing and she walked you through chest compressions. Once I started breathing again you carried me to the doctor,” Steve says, memories of his own flooding back. “You didn’t leave my side again until I got better.”

“Sarah didn’t though, did she?”

“No,” Steve murmur quietly, blinking back salty tears. “She died nine months later. You were at the funeral.”

He can see the synapses struggling to connect deep in Bucky’s head. His eyes are distant as he sits there quietly. After a few minutes of silence, he looks up with bewildered tears in his eyes. “I miss your ma,” he says, voice thick.

It takes everything for Steve to stay strong as he falters, “So do I, Buck. So do I.”

He knows Bucky was almost as close to Steve’s mom as he was because, although Bucky would never admit it, the older man’s relationship with his parents was always strained. Like Bucky was trying to live up to their perfect expectations of him but somehow fell short, even being the A+ student and champion athlete. But it was never enough.

Sarah Rogers had never given a fuck about ‘perfect.’

Steve thinks he remembers, through his fever induced haze, Bucky sobbing into his mom’s shoulder, delirious from lack of sleep, but he doesn’t know if it’s a real memory or not.

“What were you and my ma talking about when I was sick?” he asks quietly, setting his book down on the table. Bucky looks at him, unsure as he shakes his head. “Before you saved my life. You hadn’t slept in almost a week and you were crying. What did she say to you?”

He watches the older man stare just past Steve’s head, trying to remember the pieces of the past that neither of them have. “I was so tired. So worried about you and she asked if I thought you were going to be okay. I said I didn’t know and I was... so scared to lose you,” Bucky says, eyes distant and glassy. “It felt like a part of me was going to die with you.”

“But what did she _say_ to you?”

Bucky shakes his head. “I don’t know. She kissed my forehead and said that I was still me. I don’t know what she meant by that. They’re just words in my head.”

Just words in Bucky’s head, words in his head, if those words even existed at all.

Real or not real, Steve’s not sure any of them were at this point.

~~~

“When will they let me leave this floor?” Bucky asks quietly one night, the two of them curled close on the couch. The movie is half over but neither of them have been watching. “I haven’t had an episode in almost a month. I think I’m getting better.” His face twists into a pained smile. “Seriously, I do.”

Steve returns a soft smile but doesn’t answer the question because he doesn’t have an answer. He doesn’t know when the CIA will deem Bucky a non threat. Could be months, could be years, could be never. So he settles with squeezing Bucky’s shoulder, saying, “I don’t know, but I can try and find out. They may have to do some tests on you, though.” He can hear Bucky’s shaky breathing, feel the shudder under his palm, but, for the first time in what seems like forever, the older man doesn’t try and run.

“Are you going to be there with me?”

“Of course I will,” he says, thumb catching on Bucky’s collarbone. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Steve has to make a dozen calls, cover all of Tony’s media appearances for the next month, sign half a dozen contracts putting all liability on him for anything Bucky does while outside the enclosure. Bruce and Tony agree to run all the tests in the workshop so they don’t have to move Bucky any farther than needed.

He can almost feel the anxiety radiating off of Bucky as they get ready to go up to Tony’s workshop. The older man is dressed in one of Steve’s old sweatshirts, stretched and baggy from heavy wear. The dark circles still haven’t disappeared, staining Bucky’s eyes a dark blue.

“You ready?” Steve asks, scanning his hand and typing in his passcode. Bucky nods, hand shoved deep in his jean pockets.

The moment they go through both sets of doors, Bucky stops. Breathes in the fresh air, relaxes in the freedom outside of a cage and Steve realizes this is the first time in almost 70 years that Bucky hasn’t been a prisoner. The older man looks at him and blinks back grateful tears as he says, “Thank you.”

A small smile flickers on Bucky’s lips and Steve feels an ache deep in his chest, stretched as if he’s been stuffed to the breaking point. Something has been building inside his body but it’s so foreign, so ancient that he doesn’t recognize it. Only tastes that metallic burn whenever the corners of Bucky’s mouth curl to the heavens. It sedates the fear in his blood whenever Steve closes the door, waiting for the dream to end.

But maybe he never has to wake up.

Bucky pauses at the end of the hall, right at the elevator doors. He grabs Steve’s hand tight, fingers turning the pale skin of his hands white. He turns to the brunet and asks, “Are you going to be okay?” Bucky just stares at the metal box like it’s the entrance to the firing squad. Steve squeezes his hand gently, murmuring, “I’ll help you, Buck. You can do this.”

He places his hands on each side of Bucky’s face, thumbs sunken into the curves of his cheekbones, and concentrates on just getting the older man to breathe. Bucky jumps when the doors whir shut, locking them in, and the elevator hums upward.

“It’s okay, just breathe,” he mutters, relieved when Bucky inhales deeply.

And, before either of them know it, the elevator smoothly stops and the doors whoosh open.

Tony and Bruce are over in the corner tinkering with the machines, arguing about something that Steve knows he’ll never understand. Bucky opens his eyes, pulling out of Steve’s grasp and ducking out of the elevator.

“There’s no way J.A.R.V.I.S is going to be able to pinpoint Hydra’s conditioning!” Bruce says from behind his glasses, typing frantically on the keyboard projected on the standing desk.

“Dr. Banner, I assure you, there is no better way to test my capabilities than to put me through the series of tests,” J.A.R.V.I.S says, voice echoing through the lab. Tony smirks and tilts the bag of almonds towards the grumbling scientist. Bruce takes a handful and goes back to work, face a little too close to the floating screen.

Steve watches Bucky warily circle the curved table, eyes dark. He’s guessed some of what Hydra did to Bucky, some of the torture they put him through, but he knows there’s more in those 70 years than he’ll ever get to know.

But he’s so proud, _so fucking proud_ , when Bucky takes a deep breath, rolls his shoulders, and sits carefully on the table.

“How long is this going to take?” Steve asks, leaning against the table. Tony holds up a finger as he squints at the screen, enlarging sections and moving things around.

“Sir,” J.A.R.V.I.S warns, “I don’t think my biometrics are authorized to-”

“Shut up, you’ll do great,” Tony says, swiping the screens across the room so they hover above the table. Bucky looks up at the tech, half a smile involuntarily crawling out of his mouth. Steve knows how much Bucky loved technology, at least until Hydra turned him into their own personal science experiment.

Bruce wheels over a cart with a large ring on it and settles it at the head of the table. He turns to Bucky and mutters softly, “Just, uh, lay down. It’s safe, I promise.”

The former soldier gingerly peels off his sweatshirt and lays down, metal hand gripping the side carefully. Steve watches his breathing quicken as the machine powers up, beginning to spin slowly around his head. He carefully wraps his hand around Bucky’s, calming the shaking limb. He knows Tony and Bruce are watching them but there are more important things on his mind.

It takes almost ten minutes for the machine to scan Bucky’s head before it spins down the table, scanning the rest of his tense body. Inch by inch, the interior of the soldier’s body is projected above the table, glowing a pale, translucent blue.

Steve can see the dark white patches spattered through Bucky’s brain, the multiple healed fractures through his bones, the metal welded into his sternum, wires dug deep in his muscles. Bucky lets out a shaky breath as he watches his skeleton cover in pale muscle above him. The projection grows hands, spiderwebs of fractures staining the bones.

“Jesus Christ,” Steve mutters under his breath, running a hand through his hair.

“Sir, it seems that Sergeant Barnes has sustained injuries similar to those found in autopsies of Soviet prisoners of war,” J.A.R.V.I.S says, highlighting the decades old injuries in the scan. “It also appears that Sergeant Barnes as significant damage in the white matter of his brain, common with repeated electroconvulsive therapy, side effects can include cardiac arrhythmia, memory loss, erratic behavior, and loss of cognitive functions.”

“Well we all kind of knew that.”

“Tony,” Bruce chides, squinting at the scan, “you’re not helping.” He starts opening up the brain scan until he finds a thin, highlighted line deep in Bucky’s brain. “Uh, J.A.R.V.I.S?”

“It appears to be a lobotomy scar, Dr. Banner,” J.A.R.V.I.S answers. “It seems Sergeant Barnes’ brain has attempted to fix the injury, although unsuccessful.” Steve watches Bucky’s face sink, retreating into his memories, trying to remember the injury.

“Jesus, a lobotomy?” Bruce says, wandering through the lab. “They still do that?”

“It was the 40’s,” Steve says, helping Bucky sit up. “Hydra would’ve tried anything to make him more compliant.”

“Didn’t work,” Bucky mumbles, glancing at the scan still floating above him.

Bruce points a pen at him and says, “That’s probably not a bad thing. The super soldier serum regenerates cells quickly and, um, once that happened to you, anything Hydra did was pointless. Your body just fought back.”

A harsh laugh slips out of Bucky’s mouth as he says, “Doesn’t mean it didn’t ruin my life.”

“Is there anything you can do to help?” Steve asks, crossing his arms. “What do we need to do to fix this?”

“I’ve been working on something new,” Tony says, fumbling through one of his cabinets. “Taps into your hippocampus and can help clear traumatic memories. It’s still a prototype but it might help Barnes.”

“How does it work?”

The billionaire pulls out a bulky pair of glasses and holds them up. “Projects memories and allows the user to work through them to see what they could or should have done. More or less just really expensive therapy.”

“ _No_.”

They all turn to Bucky, hunched on the table, and Steve knows exactly why he can’t do this.

“I’ve been reliving everything Hydra did for months in my head, I don’t need you all or myself to fucking _see_ it.” His fingers dig into his knees as he clenches his jaw. “I haven’t even told Steve everything they’ve done.”

Steve thinks back to the hopelessly despondent face that had looked across the table at him, choking on words that should never have existed, and the more sinister words that still lay buried. He used to think of them in the future, houses next to each other, growing old with words still unspoken, but these weren’t the words he imagined. Something soft and blooming, not black and poisonous.

Bucky still cringes under his touch when he places a hand on the older man’s back.

“Can we figure something else out?” Steve asks quietly, unable to tear his eyes off Bucky’s ashamed face.

Bruce and Tony exchange looks and both men sigh. “Um, I guess we could try and figure something else out,” Bruce says. “Has he had any mood swings? Any PTSD episodes?”

Steve shakes his head and says, “No, not for over a month.” Bucky’s gaze burns a hole in the floor. “He was... slipping sometimes. Back into the Winter Soldier.” His hand shifts as the older man tilts his head up, all the blue gone from his eyes, replaced by cold metal. Intent like the barrel of a gun pointed between Steve’s eyebrows. But he smiles at Bucky, soft and gentle like he’s done for their almost twenty years together, and murmurs, “But it’s just him now.”

“Uh, are we ruining a moment here?” Tony says as he breaks the silence, pointing between the two of them. “This...” -he shrugs, palms up- “ _thing_ going on?”

Steve clears his throat awkwardly and pulls his hand back into his body. “It’s not a thing. We’ve just been catching up.” The corner of Bucky’s mouth twitches at his words and his stomach flips. “It’s just been a while.”

Bruce rubs the back of his neck and says, “Well, I don’t see why he shouldn’t be allowed out of the floor with supervision. There’s nothing that stands out to me. I personally wouldn’t leave the building but, hey, what do I know about mood swings.”

Bucky finally smiles, uneasily at first, but then relaxes at the black humor. “Thanks,” he mumbles.

The scientist fidgets with his pen and returns the smile. “It gets better, I promise.”

“Okay, don’t you two senior citizens have bingo to get to?” Tony asks, shoving them toward the door. “We need to get back to making the world a safer place, so, out.” They stumble into the hall and the metal doors of the lab slam close.

The brunet jumps a little as Steve wraps his arms around him, pulling Bucky close to his chest. The other man’s body is warm as it sinks into his, the metal hand coming up carefully to his back. “You did so good,” Steve murmurs gently. “I’m _so_ proud of you, Buck. Really, really, proud of you.”

Bucky’s fingers tangle in his shirt as he holds onto Steve like he’s the only person in the world. Like he’s the only thing that matters. Steve’s face burns hot but he just buries it in Bucky’s metal shoulder, finding cool relief through his thin T-shirt. He can feel the soft reverberation of the other man’s heart through the metal shoulder, barely there but thumping against the bridge of his nose.

When Steve pulls away from the hug, all he can see is those intense eyes watching him again. He wishes Bucky pulls would just pull the trigger.

~~~

It takes him a couple days to build up enough courage before Bucky’s actually able to leave the floor, but Steve’s by his side when he does.

He can’t do the elevator, not today, so they climb 25 stories up to the common room. Bucky pauses at the top of the stairs. His heart races in his chest and he can feel a bead of sweat dig its way down his spine. “You okay?” Steve asks quietly from behind him and Bucky can almost feel the worried look burning through his back.

“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

The words may not be true but anything for Steve to stop looking at him like that.

He finally takes a deep breath and takes the final step up into the common room, rounding the corner. He sees a man and a woman tucked in the corner of one of the couches, the woman’s legs pulled up into the man’s lap. They look so familiar but Bucky can’t place where he knows them from. She plays with the end of her red hair, fingers twirling through the strands as she smirks at whatever the man is whispering in her ear. She laughs lightly when he kisses her neck, just below her jaw.

An older man sits in the corner on his laptop and smiles at the woman’s laugh before going back to his computer.

The man and woman look up when they hear footsteps, the redhead pulling her legs back to herself. They both stand quickly when they see him, retreating as Bucky anxiously steps forward. “Cap, what is he doing out?” the man asks, his hand on the woman’s arm, holding her back.

“It’s okay, Sam, he’s not dangerous,” Steve says carefully, putting a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. The blond motions to the woman and man, saying, “Bucky, this is Natasha and Sam. The one in the back is Clint.”

Clint raises a hand and looks over his laptop. “Hey man,” he says as he tips his head up in acknowledgment. Bucky raises a hand slightly, mustering as much of a wave as he can.

The redhead, _Natasha_ , he reminds himself, glares at him sharp enough to cut and Bucky can feel his anxiety building. The black out growing in his chest, snapping bones and ripping open old wounds to stain his skin again. “I don’t trust him, Steve,” she says. “He tried to kill all of us but now it’s just _fine_?”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky mumbles quietly, Sam and Natasha both raising their eyebrows at him. “I didn’t...” Didn’t have to, didn’t mean to, didn’t want to. Nothing could fix or excuse what he had done.

“Oh no, I _very clearly_ remember you drop kicking me off a god damn helicarrier without one of my wings,” Sam snaps. “You’re lucky I had a parachute otherwise it’d be a problem right now.” He points at Natasha. “You’d have to deal with her.”

The redhead sharpens her glare further, leaning in to whisper, “You fuck up again and you’re dead, Barnes.”

She storms out, Sam following steps behind her. Bucky flinches when the door slams and he can hear Steve sigh quietly behind him. His hands begin to shake and he clenches them tight, trying to still his body. There’s an uneasy stillness in the air as there are footsteps on the tile floors as he hears someone say, “Don’t worry, Cap, Nat will come around. She never stays mad for long.”

“Barton, didn’t you tell me that she kept a grudge against the barista downstairs for, like, two years because they gave her a mocha instead of a hazelnut latte?” Steve asks with a small laugh and it’s everything Bucky can do not to just run downstairs.

He flinches when Steve puts a careful hand on his shoulder, spinning to face him and Clint. There are too many windows, too much open space, too much air for him to breathe and Bucky needs a box, needs restraint, needs to be shoved into a metal cage to be crushed, not a wide room with doors to the open air.

“You okay man?” Clint asks, snapping his fingers in front of Bucky’s face. The shorter man freezes as a metal hand wraps around his wrist, digging deep into his skin.

“Bucky, _hey_!” Steve says quickly, ripping him back and, for a split second, Bucky doesn’t know what he’s done. He looks at Clint, chest heaving, but the sandy haired man doesn’t look scared, doesn’t look angry, just looks at Bucky like he knows what he’s going through. There’s a first time for everything.

“I get it. Mind control sucks. Not gonna blame you for what you did,” he says, crossing his arms and giving Bucky a gentle smirk. “Occupational hazard, right?”

His eyebrows furrow as he looks at Steve. The blond jerks his head toward Clint and says, “There was a whole big thing a couple years again when Barton basically had the quick and easy version of what you went through. Something about some Norse gods and the Tesseract.” Bucky can see the shorter man’s smirk falter just a hair as the memories sink back. “Nobody on the team blamed him for what he did.”

“They’ll get over it with you too, Barnes,” the other man says, tapping him on the arm lightly. “Don’t stress too much.”

He watches Clint go back up to his laptop as Steve eases his grip on his metal arm. Bucky’s body still hums with unease as the younger man puts a hand between his shoulders, his free blade shifting into the fingers between them. “Hey, Bucky, relax,” Steve murmurs, breath hot against the side of his face and it only heights the anxiety in his blood.

“I’m t-trying, I’m trying,” he chokes out, trying to keep anything, his life, himself, as normal as it should be.

Steve’s brows furrow and he sighs quietly. “Let’s just go back downstairs, okay? You’ve done enough.” The knot in his shoulders doesn’t leave the locks in door click shut. Bucky drops into his couch, legs finally giving out on him as the blond looks at him worriedly. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Steve, I’m _fine_ ,” Bucky says, the lie coming out almost too easily at this point.

“You’re _not_ ,” the other man says desperately, sinking to his knees in front of him. “I just want you to stop _lying_ to me.”

“I’m not-”

“Bucky, it’s been almost two months since you got home and you still haven’t told me anything that they did to you. You’ve just been bottling it up, letting it poison you from the inside out,” Steve murmurs quietly, putting a careful hand on his knee. “I just want you to let me in.”

Bucky turns his face from the piercing blue eyes trying to work its way under his skin and says, “If I tell you, you’ll never stop thinking of me like that. Never look at me the same.”

“You’re just Bucky to me. _Nothing_ will change that.”

He stares out the window at the bright sun streaming through. “I won’t tell you everything. But I will tell you something,” he chokes out numbly. Steve’s face is fretful but patient as he waits for Bucky to open up. And he knows that Steve isn’t going anywhere soon. “They would strap me down, pump enough tranquilizers into me to kill a horse, make me compliant for at least an hour as they used vices to crack the bones in my good arm.”

“The fractures in the scan...” the blond murmurs quietly.

Bucky nods his head, still unable to look at Steve. “They would break the bones in my fingers and my feet, then throw me into a cell and do it again the next day,” he says quietly, remembering his screams echoing off the cement walls after the drugs had worn off.

“They would put a cloth over my face and pour water over it. It feels like you’re drowning. They would do that for hours until I couldn’t even scream anymore. Sometimes they would just do it for real, just sink me in a tub for minutes until I would pass out.” He can hear the other man’s uneven breathing but can’t bear to look at his face. “They would... they would strap my arms down and put a rope around my neck. Hang me so I could just barely touch the ground. Hydra did that for almost two days one time. I could barely breathe but I couldn’t seem to fucking die.”

Steve’s hands are warm on his arms and Bucky doesn’t remember when he had dug his fingers into his thighs. “You’re so goddamn strong, Buck. You should’ve-”

“They used your voice, you know,” he says, finally looking at the younger man. “I don’t know where they got it, _how_ they got it. I could hear you talking, screaming for me, and it was like I wasn’t even there. I just knew I had to get to you. I would come out when they couldn’t force me to.”

“Jesus...”

“I was scared they had captured you too. That they were going to hurt you. I could take it but I knew you wouldn’t be able to. You’re too good, Steve.”

The blond sighs and runs a thumb over the muscles in Bucky’s forearm. “I’m not that good, Buck. I’ve done things I’m not proud of. You don’t know that I wouldn’t have done exactly what you’ve been forced to do.”

Bucky looks at the deep blue eyes, looks at the flecks of green littering the irises, but all he can hear is the screams of the little girl that had cowered underneath him, his hand reaching for her arm. All he can see is the innocent lives that had been snuffed out just to torture him into submission, before he was even set loose on the world.

He shakes his head and says, “You wouldn’t have. I know you.”

Steve climbs up on the couch, their shoulders inches away from each other as he leans in, voice forceful as he says, “Bucky, whatever you did, it _wasn’t_ your fault.”

“I know. But I did it.”

There was no erasing the past any more than there was any chance of writing a perfect future. It was just something they had to learn to live with.

Bucky spends the rest of the day and night flooding another notebook with everything he can’t bear to tell Steve, the burns that had disappeared from the inside of his thighs, the needles that had never left a mark as they had been dug in between his toes, the ache he still felt deep his his abdomen when he remembers the scalpels just exploring the inside of his body.

He could fill a million notebooks and it wouldn’t be enough to spill all the damage into.

~~~

When Bucky wakes up, Hydra is there.

Or at least they are in his head.

He can feel hands on his body, grabbing him, tearing his skin, carving pieces of his soul from the inside out. He can feel the blood, the bruises they leave, still dug into his legs and hips. He would, if he could be brave enough, take a knife to his body, slice out the damaged parts that Hydra left behind, but Bucky doesn’t know if there would be anything left behind. Only the pieces of his heart that had never forgotten Steve would be left, bleeding on the floor.

When he wakes up, his teeth are sunk into the soft heel of his right hand, muffling his broken cries.

And they interweave with the silence, his body shaking, alone, in the cotton sheets.

When Steve had left, he had squeezed Bucky’s shoulder tightly, reassuring, _“I’m only going to be gone a week. You’ve been doing better. I trust you.”_

But ‘ _better_ ’ is all relative.

And sometimes ‘ _better_ ’ means punching a wall until his knuckles bleed, and drinking the burnt coffee that has been sitting in the pot for almost two days. So he sits, blood beginning to clot on his skin, palms clenched tightly around the cold mug.

He stares into the black liquid swirling around metal cup.

_“Bucky, no!”_

His hand jerks forward uncontrollably, spilling the coffee across the metal table. “Shit,” he mutters to himself, grabbing one of the square napkins from the center of the table. It soaks it quickly, but his hand shakes and suddenly he’s b _ack on the battlefield, hand over the wound in his abdomen, blood seeping through the napkin._

_“Barnes, you okay?”_

_He looks around, head faint. Bucky looks at his fingers, slick with copper blood as the napkin falls to the snow, and they’re fingers again. He blinks, looking up at Morita. “Where am I?” His voice sounds distorted, like it’s coming out of a broken speaker. He stumbles back, feet tripping over a branch, and his head cracks on the cold snow._

_Morita shoves his canteen in Bucky’s mouth, his teeth sinking into the leather cover. Bucky remembers screaming, remembers it, but it never comes out of his throat. He just stares at the grey expanse above him as Jim sloppily digs beneath his ribs._

_“Tell Steve, I-”_

_But Jim doesn’t answer because Jim isn’t there. Bucky carefully takes the canteen out of his mouth, the taste of oiled leather still sunk into his tongue. He pushes himself up on his elbows and looks around. The cold wind howls around him as he stares at the forceps sticking out of his jacket. His hands shake as he pulls it out of his body, a small, balled up picture where the bullet should have been._

_The forceps drop into the snow silently as he uncrumples the bloody picture._

_Steve, a moment frozen in time, sitting at a table in an abandoned building. Steve, drinking to forget. Steve, eyes red and face blotchy, alone._

_He looks up again, and the walls are closing in around him. He presses one hand against the metal top, feet kicking out against the cement in front of him. Clutching the picture close to his chest, he begins to hyperventilate, air rushing through his nostrils. “Come back for me, please. Don’t leave me here to die,” he begs the picture, begs Steve, begs himself._

_“Come bac_ k for me.”

Bucky breathes in clean air and stares up at the bright lights of his bathroom. He’s in the tub but he’s not sure why he’s in there, how he’s in there, or how long it’s been. It’s still dark outside the windows but that doesn’t mean anything anymore. It could have been hours or days and that’s him being hopeful.

His ribs ache as he climbs out of the tub and Bucky has to remind himself that it’s not there, it’s an old wound, there’s nothing there.

The remaining coffee has started to mold.

How long was he gone for?

However long it is, it’s long enough to let that ever present sense of dread work its way under his skin. Stand the hairs on his arm and the back of his neck at high attention. Waiting for doomsday to come.

And come it does.

It starts off as muffled voices, then loud banging on the glass door. Bucky jerks his head toward the sound, his body instantly on high alert. The pistons in his arm hiss as his fist clenches, heart pounding in his chest.

He doesn’t make a sound as he creeps around the kitchen to the door.

“I know you have a warrant, but, as I said when you entered the building, only Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers have the biometric code and passwords for the door. I physically cannot open it,” a woman’s voice says calmly, muffled through the two feet of glass. “You men are going to have to come back later.”

“When is later?”

“Whenever Mr. Stark gets back. He’s busy on a work trip.”

There are some unintelligible mutters before complete silence. Bucky nearly counts the seconds in his head, 205 to be exact, before the door opens.

A tall, thin, middle aged woman slips through the door, closing it quietly behind her. He lowers his fist warily, his eyebrows creasing together as he asks defensively, “Who are you? What do you want?”

She smiles softly at him and tucks a long strand of strawberry blonde hair behind her ear and holds out her hand. “My name is Pepper Potts. I run Mr. Stark’s businesses and oversee operations in the building. You must be James.”

Bucky doesn’t, can’t, shake her hand, but only steps back, looking between Pepper and the door. “What did those men want?” His voice breaks as he asks, “Were they going to take me?”

“Nobody is going to take you, James. Not as long as Steve is in charge of your care and I’m in charge of this building,” she says, voice firm.

Pepper’s eyes are calm and reassuring and it soothes something deep in his chest.

And for a second, all he can see is Sarah Rogers’s soothing smile, blue eyes pulling him out of a panic attack when he was 18. Her thin hands on the sides of his face, helping him breathe in and out as he shakily gulped for air. _“This doesn’t make you broken, James. You are still the same person you have been all this time. You’re just more you, now.”_

The mother of the only person he had ever loved had been the only one to keep his only secret.

“Steve and Tony will be home later tonight,” Pepper says, jolting him back into the present, her hand on his shoulder. Bucky flinches, pulling himself out of her touch. She doesn’t try and touch him again and she is only the second person, other than Steve, that doesn’t throw his words away and do what they want. And she seems to sense this as she repeats, more forcefully, “ _Nobody_ is going to take you.”

Bucky thinks about the army, Hydra, Zola, the Soviets, and the CIA all taking him against his will, and mutters, “I have a hard time believing that.”

Pepper sighs and asks, “Well, would you like some tea? Some breakfast? It looks like you haven’t eaten in days.” He just shrugs and the redhead sets about the kitchen, putting mold covered plates and cups in the dishwasher. She puts water in the kettle and turns on the induction cooktop as Bucky drops into one of the chair. “Steve did a great job setting you up in here,” she says, turning the dishwasher on. She pulls out some frozen pancakes and sticks them in the toaster.

“It’s still a prison.”

“Steve just wants to keep you safe. Maybe when they clear you, you’ll be able to leave the tower. There’s a great Spanish restaurant a block away.”

Bucky stares at the sticky stain from the dried coffee on the table and lets out a shaky breath. He closes his eyes and clenches his hands around his thighs, trying to get them to stop trembling. “I’m not making it out of here alive,” he says weakly. “If they do come for me, I’ll kill myself before I let my body be used as a weapon again.”

When Pepper turns to him, her mouth is pressed into a thin line, eyes looking at him worriedly. “You won’t need to worry about that. Steve isn’t going to let anyone hurt you.”

“He already has.”

And Bucky knows it wasn’t Steve’s fault, wasn’t his choice, but Steve should have come back for him, should have been out there looking for him instead of crashing planes into the Arctic. But he just let him be taken, let him be turned into a hollow shell, let him be ruined. He had been drafted and kidnapped and broken and Steve had moved on without him. Why would the man who could have anything want him now?

Pepper puts a plate of food and a cup of warm tea in front of him and sits down in the chair next to him. She places her hands carefully in her lap and leans forward. “You know, Steve came to talk to me while this was in construction. Do you know what he was most scared of?” she asks gently. “He was _terrified_ that you wouldn’t remember him. He thought he would lose you, even in the same room as him.”

Bucky picks at the edge of the pancakes and says, “Before the war, when we were kids, Steve was the only person to really see me for who I was, not even my family. But then things started to change and I started putting masks on for everyone and I think I ended up just leaving them on because it was easier than being who I really was.” He looks at Pepper numbly. “I think after all this time, after the war and Hydra, I don’t know if I know who that person is, if he even exists anymore.”

“What mask?”

There’s something so tranquilizing, so reassuring about the woman’s presence that Bucky can’t help the words that spill out of his mouth. “The one where I kissed girl after girl and pretended I could live my life that way. Like it wasn’t killing me inside.”

Pepper tilts her head slightly, her forehead creasing as her brows meet. “Are you...?”

“When I was twelve, my dad decided to try and ‘ _shlogn di feygele aoys mir._ ’ Beat the faggot out of me. It was the first and only time he ever beat me,” he says, scoffing bitterly. “I don’t know why, I don’t even think I had understood what I was at that point, but he did it as a precaution, I guess.” Bucky still doesn’t remember everything about his life before Hydra, but he did wake up with a lingering feeling of a belt across his back and legs, his own young voice crying, _“Tate, neyn!”_ over and over again. “It worked though. I put that mask on and never took it off.”

“Have you told anyone?” she asks quietly.

“Just Steve’s ma, Sarah.” He motions to the other woman offhandedly as he says, “And you now, I guess.”

Pepper puts a careful hand on his arm and Bucky manages not to shrink away. “I’m glad you told me this. Your secret is safe with me, James. I won’t tell anyone you aren’t comfortable with.”

Bucky shakes his head and mutters, “Don’t tell anyone.”

Pepper smiles and pushes his plate closer to him. “That’s your choice, then.”

His choice. His first choice.

~~~

Steve is so silent when he comes in that Bucky can barely hear him.

He sits up in bed, sheets falling around his bare chest, and sees the younger man standing in the doorway. Steve’s hair is a mess, his face dusted with soot and blood. His eyes are distant and far away, and Bucky knows exactly what must go on in his head.

The glint of the shield shines in the moonlight, the blond’s arm hanging loosely at his side.

“Steve?” Bucky murmurs faintly.

There’s a low thud of metal as the shield drops and the rustle of fabric as Bucky watches the other man strip down to his underwear, crawling into bed silently. He slides over in the bed as Steve drops face down in the mattress. A hand moves between them, sliding up over his abdomen. Bucky stares at the other man’s fingers as they sink into his skin, his muscles, as if he’s trying to ground himself.

“Are you okay?” he asks, covering the cold hand on his stomach.

Steve makes a small noise and buries his face in the curve of his side, breath hot against Bucky’s skin.

He pulls away, sitting the other man up. Steve’s blue eyes are dazed as he stares just past Bucky’s head, hands still trying to attach themselves to the brunet’s skin. “Steve, look at me!” he says firmly, shaking the other man’s shoulder.

Steve’s head spins to look at him, pupils blown wide in the moonlight.

The younger man kisses him sloppily, pushing Bucky back into the bed. His head sinks into the sheets, dark hair falling across his face as Steve forces his tongue into his mouth. He can taste something sweet and earthy, intoxicating remnants of something Steve had tried to wash out. “Steve... wait...” he gasps, his eyes fighting to stay open. “Stop...”

Whether the words actually come out of his mouth or not is a question he isn’t sure he has the answer to.

So Steve continues kissing, hips pressing down into his, and it makes Bucky’s skin crawl. When the other man trails down his chin and neck, he stares at a small chip in the ceiling, concentrating on that single spot to try and keep his body from shaking. An old practice that he never thought he’d have to use now.

Concentrate. Numb your body. Don’t blink.

He doesn’t bite his lip in time to stifle the whimper that escapes his mouth when Steve digs his fingers into the inside of his thighs, high, where the hem of his underwear catches on the soft hair on his leg. The younger man pulls away from the dip in his collarbone and sways slightly, slurring, “Buck... hey...” Steve scrubs a hand over his face, catching himself on Bucky’s hip as he snakes a hand up through the hem.

Bucky tries to think of anything, anything to get his hand to unclench. He loves Steve, not this Steve but _his_ Steve, he should enjoy this instead of feeling the razor blades crawl up his spine.

Not _this_ Steve.

He doesn’t know how or when he ends up on the floor, throwing up what was left of the pancakes Pepper had managed to get him to eat, Steve in the corner looking horrified, but it happens. Bucky’s skin crawls when he looks across the room and the blue eyes clouded with shame. “I thought you couldn’t get drunk,” he spits; the words are heavy on his tongue but he hopes they’re heavier in Steve’s ear.

“Thor...” the other man slurs. “Said I could keep... keep it... said it would... help forget...” the words come out slow like he’s trying to piece them together from a tar pit, everything running together in the black expanse. “Didn’t know... how much to... Drank too... much...”

“I _TRUSTED_ you!” he screams, voice raw, and it’s loud enough to make Steve flinch uncontrollably. Bucky fights back the angry tears in his eyes as he sits up fully. “The CIA comes for me and this is what I get in return?”

Steve’s head tilts as he garbles, “CIA?” He waves him off dismissively. “Can’t take you... not here...”

“They can’t take me but _you_ can?” Bucky chokes out dejectedly. “Take me from one prison to the next and nothing ever changes! Why did you even bring me here if you’re just going to be exactly like Hydra?!”

“I thought you _wanted_ me!” Steve shouts at him, voice barely clear. “I don’t know how to do this... I _never_ did! And trust me, Buck, you don’t... make it any easier for me.”

Bucky would kill for a door to slam but settles with storming into the bathroom, his metal hand slamming into the cement wall, his vision blurry. He drops down onto the metal toilet, fighting the gut reaction to just smash his own face in the concrete counter. Maybe if he... right on the corner... he might stop feeling the fingerprints still burning their way through his skin. Steve’s fingerprints.

He sits there for hours in the silence of the bathroom, trying not to gag, trying not to peel every inch of skin off his body. He sits there for _hours_ before Steve comes into focus on the doorway, holding his forehead. “Ugh, I forgot what a hangover was like,” he groans before stopping and noticing Bucky’s distress. “Buck, you okay? What happened?”

And there it was.

There are memories in Bucky’s head that he can’t trust to be real, ones he knew didn’t really exist, and ones he desperately wished weren’t the truth. Missed looks from when they were teenagers, Steve kissing him behind the bar in London, last night.

And he tries to fight the feeling, but all he can do is laugh icily.

When Steve crouches down and puts a hand on his arm, he recoils, snapping, “Don’t touch me.” Bucky watches the younger man’s eyes sink to the floor, trying to remember what happened, as he pulls his hand back. But it never comes, never sinks Steve into a hole like it does to him, only makes the words, “I wish you would just _talk_ to me,” come out of the blond’s mouth.

“You don’t want to hear anything I have to say.”

Steve opens his mouth to pull him back down, but the banging at the door interrupts any chance of them fixing this.

His head snaps up, eyes widening in fear as he scrambles out of the bathroom, Steve trailing along behind him. Bucky pulls on a T-shirt and sweatpants as Steve grabs his shield and says, “Steve, if they try and take me, I need you to promise me something.”

The other man looks at him, half worried, half annoyed, and says, “Oh, so now we’re _fine_?”

“ _No!_ ” Bucky shouts, desperation backing him into the glass windows. The sun is just beginning to rise over the New York skyline and it casts his shadow across the room, the gold surround the blackness seeping out from his core. “You _owe_ me,” he begs, watching the realization dawn across Steve’s face. “If they are going to take me...”

“Bucky, no!”

“If they are _going to take me_... You need to _promise_ me that they aren’t going to take me alive. I can’t go back there.” He pulls the plastic kitchen knife from underneath the pillow, the safe place he had put it after they came for him earlier. His thumb catches the filed edge and point and Bucky can feel his skin thinly separate. He presses it into Steve’s palm before replacing the space between them again. “I know it’s not your weapon of choice but I need you to use it.”

Steve’s hands shake as they wrap around the handle.

Their eyes meet as Bucky’s hand comes up to touch the low curve of his neck, inches from where his skin meets the metal plates. “Just right here. Right in between my neck and shoulder and do a quick jerk like you’re pulling a lever,” he says quietly. “It’ll cut the subclavian artery. It’ll only be five seconds, maybe ten.”

The other man shakes his head defeatedly, and pleads, “ _Please_ don’t make me do this.”

“Don’t worry, you could never hurt me. After what you did last night, killing me quickly is the least you can do.”

Steve’s eyebrows furrow but this time something replaces the confusion in his eyes as he finally remembers the damage he’s caused. Shame. His mouth drops open as he backs away from Bucky, hitting the wall with a low thump. “Buck... I didn’t...” he mutters breathlessly, quiet under the banging outside. “ _Fuck_ , I can’t believe I-”

“ _Don’t_ ,” he says sharply. “Let’s just get this over with.”

They must look a sight, the bags under his eyes dark against his pale face and Steve tense with his shield tucked right in front of him, knife slid into his waistband. He stays back, his path blocked by the couch as Steve opens the doors.

“Captain Rogers, we are here to bring James Barnes back in our custody. The federal government has brought charges of treason against him,” a voice says through the first door. “Remove yourself, Captain.”

Steve returns into the room, backing towards him as over two dozen CIA agents flood in, with more outside, guns raised. Bucky closes his eyes and hopes to god Steve doesn’t hesitate.

“You’re not taking him,” he hears Steve growl and opens his eyes to see the younger man standing in front of him, hand back to protect him. “The United States government doesn’t prosecute prisoners of war. You’re not taking him back. He stays _here_.”

“Steve...”

“Bucky, _stop_.”

“Captain Rogers, step aside.”

Bucky stares at the barrels of the guns meant for him turn their aim on Steve. The younger man’s voice is dark as he warns, “If you try and take him, it’s not going to end well for you and your men. And once I’m done with you, we’ll both disappear and who’s going to clean up your messes if Captain America is gone?”

“ _Steve... please...”_

“We don’t _prosecute_ prisoners of war.” Bucky can hear the leather straps tighten in Steve’s palm but all he can focus on is the knife tucked into the waistband of the other man’s shorts. Maybe if he could just grab it... with the right angle... and enough force...

“You don’t have the authority, Captain Rogers. This goes far above you,” the lead CIA agent says, tightening the grip on his handgun.

“Then I’ll go to the top,” Steve says. “I’ll go to the god damn president if I have to, but you are not taking him. Now, this is the last chance I give you all to leave before everything goes to hell. You should take it and go home in one piece.”

The moment is tense enough to wrap its way around Bucky’s neck, taught, like a belt down to its buckle. It’s minutes before the CIA agent jerks his head toward the door, muttering, “Stand down, men.” Steve unlocks the doors and Bucky flinches when they slam closed as he comes back into the enclosure.

He stares at the floor as the younger man shifts, murmuring, “Bucky, I just want you to kn-”

“I think you should go too.”

Steve doesn’t even put up a fight, doesn’t argue back like Bucky’s used to, only grabs his uniform from the bedroom and slips out quietly, locks hissing closed behind him.

In the silence of the great grey room, Bucky has only his thoughts, the hum of heavy blood rushing through his veins, and the finger shaped bruises dug into his hips like pools of black paint.

And it’s _not_ enough.

~~~

Being Captain America has its perks at times, one of them being the fact that he’s stopped asking permission long ago.

So when he shows up to the White House unannounced, pissed off and demanding to speak to President Ellis, he is granted an audience without question. Secret Service offers him a chair in the Oval Office, but he declines, leaning against the desk, arms crossed.

It’s almost ten minutes before the door opens and President Ellis comes in the office, his hand outstretched. “Sorry for the wait, Captain Rogers,” he says, shaking his hand.

“You’re a busy man,” Steve says bluntly. “But I won’t keep you long.”

Ellis rounds the desk and sits in his chair, asking, “So how can I help, Captain?”

“I want you to issue a preemptive pardon to Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes covering treason, murder, and any other crimes against the state that he may be charged with,” he says, leaning against the desk. “And I’m not _leaving_ until I get it in writing.”

President Ellis leans forward and pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s not that simple, Captain Rogers. He killed _Kennedy_ for God’s sake. The CIA has pinned dozens of political assassinations to the Winter Soldier, not to mention the all the innocent lives lost during fall of Project Insight. Someone has to answer for his crimes.”

“Then _I_ will,” Steve says and he can feel the burn in his chest from two nights ago worm it’s way deeper into his sternum. He remembers the way Bucky had looked at him with fear, with disgust, when Steve had put his hand on his arm. After what he had done, what he had almost done, taking the weight of the charges is the least he could do. “I’ll answer for his crimes, for what Hydra did to him. I’m the reason he was captured and nothing he did was his fault.”

“Captain, I’m not going to press treason charges against a national hero-”

“Then why is the government pressing charges against James Barnes?!” he demands, slamming his fist on the desk. Ellis jumps slightly, a flash of fear in his eyes. “They named a god damn medal of honor after him! He was captured for _70 years_ , Mr. President. He needs to be classified as a prisoner of war, not a criminal.”

“Tell that to the families of-”

“Did anyone think about _his_ family?” Steve asks, a little too roughly. “Were _you_ the one that had to call his mother and explain why the Army wasn’t sending anyone to go look for him? Were _you_ the one that had to tell his 85 year old sister that, even though she’s the only family he has left, that she can’t go see him because he’s in federal custody?” Ellis sighs and leans back in his chair. “She’s got lymphoma. Probably 6 months left. He doesn’t even know that she’s alive.”

President Ellis sighs and give him an apologetic look. “Captain, I’m sorry you’ve been put in this position but-”

“You have no idea what position I’ve been put in,” he growls, the feeling of his hand wrapping around the handle of the knife still ever present on his fingers. He can still see Bucky’s fingers lingering against his own neck, showing Steve the quickest way to a clean death. “If you could just see him, sir, you’d understand that Sergeant Barnes is punishing himself far more than the government ever could.”

“I’ll see if we can get the charges reduced but-”

“Pardon. Him.” His voice is dangerously low and Steve is starting to wonder if he’ll have to deal with Secret Service if it keeps going on like this. “I want any crimes from February 14th, 1945 to October 3rd, 2014 wiped from his record. I don’t even want his record to _exist_ ,” he says. “Full presidential pardon. Final offer.”

The greying President raises an eyebrow. “Final offer for _what_?”

“With all due respect, Mr. President, you let a terrorist cell grow undetected in one of the most powerful divisions in the government. I can get ahold of people who are more than capable of decrypting Hydra’s files,” Steve says, folding his arms across his chest. “I don’t know if your name is going to be in those files, but I don’t think you want to risk finding out.”

Ellis rises slowly, fingers spread across the decades old desk, eyes firm as he asks, “It sounds like you’re threatening to _blackmail_ the President of the United States.”

Steve sets his jaw firmly, his heart beating fast inside his chest as Ellis glares at him icily. “If that’s what it takes,” he says quietly.

They seem frozen in time for what seems like an eternity before the President sighs quietly. “If Steve Rogers is willing to commit treason over this,” he says, almost to himself, “then the government may be in the wrong here.”

It doesn’t even feel real, as he sits on one of the couches in the Oval Office, watching people bustle around with papers and pens and notaries. Steve stares at the wall, Bucky’s broken voice rattling around his head, choking out, “ _Don’t worry, you could never hurt me. After what you did last night, killing me quickly is the least you can do._ ”

Maybe after _not_ killing him that night, _this_ is the least he can do.

“A copy for your records,” a secretary says over him, jolting Steve out of his thoughts. “Nothing will be public for confidentiality reasons, but Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes has been fully pardoned by President Ellis.” Steve takes the papers carefully. “Congratulations.”

He shakes far too many hands, smiles for a couple pictures, and shares a knowing look with Ellis before he manages to get out of the White House and back on the road again.

It’s a four hour trip home and the stars are out by the time he’s on his way up in the elevator.

The lights are off when he gets to the 45th floor, darkness pouring through the glass, and there’s an air of dread that hangs over Steve as he presses the buttons on the keyboard and scans his hand. The locks click open quietly, the hinges squealing softly as he pushes open the door. The city lights spill in the windows, casting long shadows across the room.

The plastic knife glints on the table and Steve can see the dark stain of dried blood.

His stomach sinks and he freezes, hand clenching around the metal door handle. He looks around the dark apartment, calling out, “Bucky?” He can hear the quiet ticking of the clock, but nothing else.

Steve races through the apartment, checking every corner of the place, but Bucky is nowhere to be found. There’s a blood smear on the sink in the bathroom and it only aggravates the screaming in his head. Steve can feel his hands shakes as he opens the doors again, racing back into the elevator.

The common room is empty except for Clint FaceTiming with Laura. He goes up to the 50th floor and knocks on Sam’s door. He’s not even surprised when Natasha opens the door wearing one of Sam’s old Air Force T-shirts. She leans against the doorway, hair mussed, and asks, “We’re busy, Rogers. What do you want?”

He can’t even hide the panic in his voice as he asks, “Do you know where Bucky is? He’s not downstairs.”

Nat crosses her arms, looking at him concernedly. “I haven’t seen him for a couple days. I don’t think Sam has either.” She leans back, calling behind the door, “You seen Barnes at all today?”

“Haven’t seen him, baby!” Sam calls back, making Natasha roll her eyes. She turns back to Steve, shaking her head. “Maybe check with Tony or Bruce? I bet J.A.R.V.I.S could find him pretty easily, if he’s still in the building,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll find him. I’m sure he’s fine.”

Steve can hear the blood pounding in his ears as he rides the elevator up to Tony’s penthouse.

The lights are on and there’s soft music playing, Tony and Pepper talking quietly in the corner. Steve’s boots squeak on the tile floor and they both look up at him. Pepper puts a finger to her lips, shushing quietly. “He’s sleeping,” she mouths, pointing to the couch.

Steve peeks over and sees Bucky stretched out, face down on the leather sofa. The brunet is snoring softly, dark circles staining the pale skin under his eyes.

Tony pads over silently in sock clad feet, whispering, “Where the hell were you today, Cap? We’ve both been calling your phone all day. Barnes was about to have a mental breakdown if Pep hadn’t gone to check on him.”

He scrubs a hand over his face and sighs. “Fuck, sorry, I left my phone back here when I went to DC. I should have called,” he says quietly.

“DC?” Pepper asks, hurrying over. “What were you doing in DC?”

Steve holds up the packet of papers. “James Buchanan Barnes is an innocent man now. Full presidential pardon. Wasn’t easy but I got it.”

“How the hell did you swing that?” Tony begins to ask but stops, holding up his hand. “Actually, knowing you, I don’t want to know how you got that.” Steve shrugs in agreement. The shorter man jerks his thumb toward the sleeping figure on the couch and says, “He’s been out about six hours I think. J.A.R.V.I.S fixed up his hand at least.”

“What the hell happened to his hand?”

Pepper sighs and pulls Steve to the side, muttering quietly, “Steve, when I went upstairs to check on James, he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. He was standing there with his hand cut open, bleeding into the sink. Crying and saying he was just trying to feel something.” She looks at him worriedly and Steve knows how worried Pepper can get over just about everyone. She was the non judgmental voice of reason in the tower and was the only reason have of them were still in one piece. “Did something happen with you guys?” she asks in a low voice.

“I did something I shouldn’t have and I think I just made things worse,” Steve says, trying not to let the guilt be too present in his voice. Pepper sighs but doesn’t pry further.

“Think you can get him off my couch?” Tony interrupts, head popping over Pepper’s shoulder.

The blonde shrugs him off, giving him a look. “Tony, stop it. He can stay as long as he needs to, Steve.”

Steve puts a hand on her shoulder, saying, “Pepper, it’s okay. I’ll try and get him up.”

Bucky is still fast asleep when Steve bends down, brushing the dark strands out of his face. “Bucky?” he murmurs gently, shaking his shoulder carefully. “Bucky, wake up, it’s Steve.”

The older man scrambles awake, backing himself into the corner of the couch as he gasps, “Don’t fucking touch me.” Bucky’s eyes are filled with the same fear that Steve had seen early. “I’m not going back. I’m not fucking going back with you.” Steve steps back and places the packet next to him. “What are these?” he asks warily.

“Just open them.”

Steve watches him pull the papers out, eyes scanning over the lines of text and signatures. The older man swallows thickly, eyes darting up to meet his as he says breathlessly, “Steve...”

He offers a thin smile and says, “Don’t worry about it.” Bucky shoves the papers back in the packet, hands clenched around the envelope. Steve stands up and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Now you can do whatever you want. I’m not going to make you stay if you don’t want to,” he says turning to leave.

Pepper and Tony both give him concerned looks as he heads toward the elevator, but Steve just wants to disappear as quickly as he can.

There’s a hushed, “Steve...” behind him and he knows exactly who it belongs to.

And he also knows if he looks back at Bucky, he’ll never want to leave.

~~~

He stares at the papers in his hands for what feels like hours.

Presidential Pardon.

He was _free_.

“James?” Bucky jumps slightly when he hears his name and looks up, seeing Pepper standing over him. She sits carefully on the couch next to him and says, “I think you should go talk to Steve.”

He looks at her and knows that she’s right, especially after the amends that Steve had clearly gone out of his way to make. Shoving the papers back in the envelope, Bucky mutters, “Fine, I’ll go talk to him.” He knows that Pepper wants to say more to him, but he honestly doesn’t want to hear it right now. There’s enough bubbling around in his brain that he can’t take any more guilt.

The elevator stops at the 64th floor and Bucky just wants to ride it all the way back down to his floor, where it’s safe, where it’s familiar, where he can be a prisoner in his own world again, but it wouldn’t do him any good. He has to face this eventually.

He knocks twice on the door and tries to still his beating heart.

It takes a few minutes before the door finally opens, Steve’s stoic face staring back at him remorsefully.

Bucky holds up the packet of papers and asks faintly, “Why did you do this for me?”

Steve looks at the floor, shoulders pulled up to his ears as he crosses his arms nervously. “After what I did, what I almost did, I didn’t want you to feel like it might happen again. I wanted you to have the choice to leave if you didn’t feel safe around me,” he says, voice quiet and thick like he wants to keep those words deep in his chest.

“I don’t feel safe around anyone.” The words rattle around his mouth as he stares Steve down. “Not Pepper. Not you. Not even myself.”

The blond swings the door open, asking, “Do you want to come in? I just made some coffee.”

Bucky knows he’s too far gone when he can’t stop the tired half-smile that crosses his face. “ _Steve_... it’s almost 3am.”

Steve shrugs and says, “I don’t have anything better to do.”

They sit across from each other at the table, Bucky’s hands curling around the warm white porcelain, soaking up the warmth. He’d forgotten what it was like to have an actual cup again, after decades of metal. He stares at the liquid, dark against the white cup, and says, “You know, I never got used to black coffee in the army. I missed the way my mom used to make it with Carnation.”

Steve lets out a short breath and says, “We never had the money. I got used to it pretty quick.”

“Remember when I bought you that caramel cake for your birthday and then you didn’t even eat it?” he asks quietly. “You know, when you turned 16? The one with all the layers.” Bucky looks up wistfully, Steve meeting his joyless gaze. “Must’ve cost almost two dollars. I don’t know how long I saved up for that damn thing, but you said you didn’t want anything. It was the only thing I could think of to make you happy.”

Steve sighs quietly and and the silence settles over them like the dusting of snow outside. “How did we get to be like this?” he asks dejectedly. “What the hell _happened_ to us?”

Bucky can feel his chin waver as he shakes his head. He looks up at the soft lights above them, trying to blink back his tears as he lets out a shuddering breath. “I don’t know,” he chokes out brokenly.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the blond drop his head into his hands and Bucky wonders if this is just how it’s going to be now on. They only had each other but now even that had been split apart by fate. Steve looks up at him, eyes red, and asks, “Is there _any_ way I can fix this? I’ll do anything.” He puts a careful hand on Bucky’s arm. “I _can’t_ lose my best friend.”

Bucky stares at the ceiling, eyes still burning as he says, “What if I’m not me anymore? I know I’m not the Winter Soldier but I don’t think I’m Bucky Barnes either anymore. Or at least the Bucky that used to exist before all this.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not the same person that went into the ice,” Steve says in a low voice. “I thought I could jump back in, follow orders, but I don’t think it’s that simple anymore.”

“When the hell did you used to follow orders?” he scoffs, and it seems to ease the tension just a little bit. He looks at Steve blearily and tries to force a smile. “You’re a stubborn asshole and nobody sees it but me.”

“You’ve _always_ just seen me.”

There’s an uncomfortable stillness as Bucky drops his gaze again. “I can’t forgive you for what you did...”

“I’m not asking you to...” Steve yields guiltily. “I know I fucked up.”

“I can’t forgive you, but I just want to forget that night,” he says. “If I think of you like I think of Hydra, it’s going to kill me.” He looks up at Steve, trying to stay strong. “I have to let this go, but you need to promise me nothing like that can happen again.”

The other man shakes his head quickly muttering, “It won’t. Swear on my ma, I won’t touch you.”

He smiles again, this time less forced and more relaxed. “Thank you,” he says. “For that, and this.” Bucky holds up the packet of papers and Steve smiles softly. “I wasn’t going to ask how you ended up getting this but, knowing you, I’m sure you did something completely stupid. Am I right?”

Steve smirks slightly, a look Bucky hasn’t seen for almost 75 years, and says, “I may or may not have threatened to blackmail the president.”

He rolls his eyes, shaking his head. “Of course you did,” Bucky says, taking a sip of his coffee. Steve chuckles gently at the bitter face he makes and grabs some sugar from a cupboard and milk from the fridge. He dumps a little of both into Bucky’s cup and sticks a spoon in it. Bucky stirs the coffee, muttering, “Thanks.”

“I’ll get some Carnation on hand so you don’t have to complain anymore,” Steve says, sitting back down. “Wouldn’t want you suffering next time I make you coffee.”

“There’s going to be a next time?”

Steve’s brows furrow as he looks at Bucky, almost confused. “Of course there’s going to be a next time. Why wouldn’t there be?”

“I don’t trust happiness to last very long.”

The words don’t come out harsh, only true. Any time Bucky thinks that he can just have a moment of happiness, a second to let his guard down, everything crumbles underneath him, like he’s sitting at the top of a house of cards. Standing at the tip with everyone from Hydra to himself trying to shoot the base.

He’s waiting for Steve to stop him, to tell him he was crazy, that he was wrong, but he never does. Just sighs and nods understandingly, like he knows what Bucky’s going through, but it seems like they’re at the opposite ends of the graveyard. Steve burying all the bodies that Bucky leaves in his wake.

“Well, we can try and hold on to those little moments of happiness, can’t we?” the blond asks gingerly. “Is that so bad to want that?”

“It’s not,” Bucky concedes. And when Steve smiles at him, part of him never wants this moment to end. He wants it sewn into his chest so when he watches himself wither away in the mirror, he’ll have something to remember when things are at their darkest. He would stare at the two of them, hands wrapped around cooling coffee mugs, drowning up to their necks in words neither of them can say.

“So what do we do now?” Steve asks carefully, like he’s dodging a question instead of answering one.

Bucky shrugs and finishes the last of his coffee. “I don’t know. I don’t know where we go from here.” His fingers wrap around the silver spoon as he sets it on the table, Steve watching his every movement. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Are you going to stay here?”

He shrugs again. “I think so. This tower is the only home I’ve had since I got shipped out. I don’t know anything else.”

Steve breathes quietly for a couple minutes, staring blankly into his remaining coffee. Bucky’s about to open his mouth when the other man looks up, blue eyes fixed on him as he asks faintly, “Do you want to stay here tonight?”

They could wrap fingers around each other’s throats and still come crawling back to each other, over and over until they both die. When codependent friendship turns to love, Bucky’s not sure if either of them win. Someday he’ll break the cycle, but tonight he settles with a pliant, “Okay.”

Steve falls asleep quickly, tucked tightly on the opposite side of the bed as Bucky, but he just can’t seem to let his mind rest. He studies every inch of the other man’s face, the way the blond hair falls down over his dark eyelashes, the way the moonlight falls across the bridge of Steve’s nose. Memorizes it like it’s the first time he’s seeing him, or the last. Like one day this will all seem like a distant memory, when they’re good and dead, and Bucky can stop pretending he isn’t falling back in love.

It won’t come soon enough.

~~~

“Put your coat on,” Steve says, tossing him his jacket from across the room.

Bucky catches it, shoving his arms in his sleeves. He shoves his feet in his boots before he even stops to ask, “What’s going on?”

“We’re going to see Peggy.”

He freezes, fingers on the zipper, as he whispers, “Steve... I can’t. I can’t go outside, I can’t go see her.”

Steve puts a careful hand on his shoulder and says, “You can do this. You have to go outside eventually.”

Bucky sighs and knows that he’s right. He’s been doing leaps and bounds better than the night he tried to kill himself, had more stable days than not, but the farthest he’s gotten is the balcony out outside from the common room. He has to leave the safety of the tower eventually, but he’s not sure if this is the time.

Regardless, he says, “Fine,” and zips his jacket up.

It’s cold outside, snow starting to fall in the early December morning. They duck into a waiting car and ride across state lines, heading south toward DC.

The entire four hour trip goes by in silence, Bucky staring at his hands, Steve’s watchful eyes burning a hole in the side of his head. They haven’t patched things fully, mild spats and Bucky’s ever present anxiety and nightmares staining the space between them. For each step forward, it’s one step back. But they keep moving forward and that’s what matters.

As they pull up to the nursing home, Steve catches his elbow as he tries to exit the car. “Just so you know, Peggy has been dealing with memory problems the last couple years. It comes and goes, so don’t be surprised if she doesn’t remember you.”

At least he would have some good company for once.

The nursing home smells acrid, like medicine and cleaning solution, and its scent worms its way into Bucky’s chest. All he can think about is the bleach solution Hydra would soak the lab in, where he was brought to again and again and again. It’s a familiar smell, but not a kind one.

“You okay?” Steve asks quietly, as the turn down another hall. Bucky wonders how many times he’s been here. How many times Steve has tried to hold on to the past as it slips through his fingers.

They push a door open and Bucky’s breath catches at the sight of the frail woman laying in bed. Her once beautiful, young face scarred by wrinkles, still perfect hair falling back on the pillow behind her head. He backs up, heart racing as he disappears back through the doorway. Steve glances back at him and turns to the woman. “Hey Peggy, it’s me, Steve.”

Peggy smiles wide, her deep wrinkles coming together next to her eyes. “Steve, it’s been so long since you came.”

Steve grins and sits down next to her bed. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Peg,” he says, putting a hand on her knee. He glances at the door and leans in. “I brought someone to see you, Peggy.”

Bucky rounds the corner with his head down, hands shoved deep in his pockets. Peggy narrows her eyes, trying to see under his hat. He finally sighs and looks her in the eyes. Peggy’s mouth drops open and her eyes widen. She grabs Steve’s hand, squeezing tightly. “Sergeant Barnes?” she gasps in amazement. “You’re _alive_?”

Bucky watches him squeezes her hand back gently. He knows the shock of getting her lost love back was hard enough for Peggy to take, especially after Steve mentioned her memory going. Now another dead man is back from the grave.

He sits on the edge of her bed and forces a smile. “Hey Peggy.”

“My god, what have you done with your hair?” she asks with her light laugh that echoes through the small room. “You look dreadful.” Her dark eyes scan over his face, remembering those few glances she took of him when she wasn’t captivated by Steve. Peggy’s expression changes, though, when she sees his metal hand sticking out of his jacket sleeve. Her eyes go wide with fear and she grabs Steve’s arm. “It’s you,” she cries in horror as she points a thin finger at Bucky. “It’s _you_!”

Fury must not have been the first S.H.I.E.L.D director he had been sent to kill.

Bucky jumps off the bed, backing into the corner as Peggy begins screaming for help. “Go!” Steve shouts. “Just wait outside!”

“He’s going to kill us, Steve,” Peggy warns hysterically, her thin hand wrapped around his arm. “We need to get out of here.”

Steve smooths his hand over the grey curls falling around her frightened face, trying to calm her down. “That wasn’t him, Peggy. Hydra tortured him and had control of his mind.”

Peggy blinks for a second, brow beginning to furrow in that familiar look of confusion. “Steve?”

He tries to smile but it gets harder and harder seeing Peggy like this. Smart as a whip Peggy. Now she remembers his face and not much else. “Give me a sec, Peg. I think there’s someone you might want to see.”

Steve steps out to find him slumped with his back against the wall, fists anxiously clenching and unclenching. “I can’t go back in there,” he says nervously. “She knows what I am. She knows what I’ve done.”

Steve pulls a leather glove out of his pocket and slips it on Bucky’s hand. “She won’t remember you once you go back in there, trust me,” he says, a twinge of regret in his voice.

They go back in the room, Steve’s hand on Bucky’s shoulder. Peggy shifts up in bed, peering at Bucky’s skittish face under the brim of his baseball cap. “James Barnes? Is that you?” she asks in awe. “But... how did you?”

Bucky sits down carefully, muttering, “Story for another time.”

Peggy puts a gentle hand on his knee and says, earnestly, “I’m very happy that you’re back, James.”

He settles for the first time in weeks, relaxing in front of the one person that he’s always been jealous of. Even though Bucky would never admit it, he always had that clench in his jaw every time Peggy was around. The small huff every time Steve would laugh at one of her jokes. That should’ve tipped Steve off back in 1943 but going to war was the only thing he cared about.

And now, the war never seemed to end.

He and Peggy chat quietly about the present until Peggy turns her bright smile back to Steve. “Steve, could you be a dear and wait out in the hall for a moment?” she asks, coughing slightly. “I’d like to speak with James privately.”

The door closes and Bucky sinks a little further into his chair. “I don’t know if I’m cut out for this world, Peggy,” he whispers. “I don’t understand anything anymore.”

Peggy takes his hand gently in both of hers. She pats the rough skin and says, “At least you and Steve have each other. Steve has been so lonely for so long.” Her laugh lines fade on her face, lips turning down. She looks at Bucky seriously. “I want you to know something. I want you to know how _truly_ sorry I am that we never sent anyone after you.” Bucky leans forward and she puts a hand on his cheek. “I should have sent someone to find you after you fell from the train. I am _so sorry_ , James.”

Bucky’s eyes burn with tears at her words. He wipes at them roughly, the leather of his glove smearing salt water across his skin.

“I was out there, you know,” he mutters quietly. “I hit the rocks before I fell into river and pulled myself up into the snow. I crawled for almost ten miles. It took weeks.” He looks up at the bright lights above him, trying to blink back the hot tears in his eyes. “Every day I thought I was going to die, either freeze to death or bleed out but it never happened.”

“James, I-”

“I just wanted to go _home_ ,” he chokes out, voice cracking.

He remembers collapsing under a tree, the first shelter he had found since he has crashed onto the hard earth, his body shaking from shock. He had thought when the Russians picked him up, he thought he would have come back to a hero’s welcome but instead found himself a prisoner of war.

And then Zola got his hands on him.

 _Zola_.

He looks back at Peggy, his heart beginning to race. “Wait... did you let him go?” Bucky asks brokenly. “Steve would have caught Zola on that train. Did you let him _go_?”

Peggy purses her lips and tries to keep up the strong exterior Bucky knows she had spent decades perfecting. But he can see the tears start to form in the wrinkles around her eyes. “It wasn’t my order. I was strictly against the whole thing, but he had provided information and Colonel Phillips let him...”

“Let him take me?”

Her eyes narrow in confusion.

“They found me and experimented on me. Turned me into Steve but something worse, something dirty. Put me on ice just like him,” Bucky says harshly, eyes focused on the wall across from him. “Steve saved me but I shouldn’t have _needed_ to be saved in the first place.”

When he turns to the old woman, her eyes give him a taste of the fear she had earlier when she realized who he was, and he has to soften his eyes. He doesn’t know how or why Peggy had survived but Bucky wonders if Hydra had just set him loose just to terrify her. Send her a message not easily forgotten.

Peggy takes his hand in her own thin, frail ones and looks at him apologetically. “James, I know you owe me nothing in the world, but I want you to promise me one thing,” she says, squeezing his hand tightly. “Since I know he won’t do it himself and I need someone I can trust.”

Bucky nods, his heart pounding in his throat.

“I don’t have much time left on this earth. Please look after our Steve, for me.”

“Of _course_.” The words come tumbling out of his dry mouth like bricks, spilling like dust over them both. Peggy pulls him in and places a tender kiss on his cheek. Bucky stares at the creases and age spots covering her face and feels a twinge if jealousy. This should have been him and Steve, growing old together instead of watching the world pass them by. “I would never hurt Steve. I-”

“You _love_  him.”

The words hurt more than any punch to the chest he’s ever taken, coming from her. He shakes his head frantically, sputtering, “N-No, I don’t. It’s just... I don’t...”

Peggy chuckles, knowing eyes watching the man sitting across from her. “The moment I met you, James, I could tell. And seeing you two now... well, you may just have your work cut out for you.”

Bucky sighs, looking down at his hands. “Steve is just...”

“He makes himself very easy to love, doesn’t he?” Bucky tries to calm the rapid thump of his chest but can’t.

“And he doesn’t even try,” he says almost a little bitterly. Bucky could do everything in the world to make up self easier to love and he would still be invisible.

“Just give him time,” Peggy reassures. “Steve is a good man but he’s not the brightest. It takes a bit to get through that thick skull of his.” She pauses and gives him a sincere look. “You’re good for him, you know. After you were lost... Steve changed. He was more reckless. Angrier. Darker,” she recalls. “Now... I recognize him again.”

Peggy coughs roughly and Bucky looks to the door, saying, “Hold on, let me get Steve!” But once he turns back to the elderly woman, Peggy looks at him like she’s seen a ghost.

“Sergeant Barnes? You’re alive?” she exclaims. Tears fill her eyes as she covers her mouth, a sob escaping. “James, Steve is dead,” she weeps, salty tears running down her face. “He thought you were gone and sacrificed himself. James, what will we do without our Steve?”

Bucky’s hand shakes as he brushes her tears away. He’s not sure anything he can say will make this better, because she won’t remember it anyway.

~~~

Bucky watches Steve carefully over the top of his book in the common room, his anxiety off the charts. He hasn’t turned a page in almost 10 minutes and he’s hoping Natasha hasn’t noticed. Steve’s face is illuminated in the darkness by the light of his laptop, covering him in a soft blue glow. Suddenly he looks up at Bucky and smiles softly before going back to his computer.

“Get a room, Barnes,” Natasha hisses mockingly in his ear, making him jump. “You stare at Rogers any harder and you might actually undress him.”

Bucky can’t help but flush a couple shades of red, his heart stopping as Steve glances up at the two of them. “Shut up, Romanoff,” he spits quietly as Steve goes back to whatever he’s doing. His mouth is dry and he’s not positive he’s going to stay conscious much longer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about you trying to eye fuck Rogers over there. I mean, I don’t blame you but, still,” she purrs quietly before sauntering away with a smirk.

Bucky scrambles off the couch, following her off down the hall. “Hey!” he shouts. “Hey, Romanoff!” He grabs the redhead’s arm, ripping her back towards him. The mechanics in his arm crank as his grip tightens around Natasha’s wrist. “Don’t fucking tell Steve,” he growls, face inches away from Natasha’s.

She smirks up at him defiantly and says, “Then tell him yourself. He’s too dense to notice you pining away at him from across the room.” Natasha pulls her wrist out of Bucky’s hand. “But honestly, he could do better.”

Her tone is joking but it still fucking stings. Bucky’s fist clangs shut and he has to do everything in his power not to punch Natasha in her smug face. “Fuck you,” he snarls. “Like you have _any_ idea what it’s like coming back from this.”

“I know _exactly_ what Mother Russia turns people like us into.”

Bucky’s fist unclenches.

“Did Steve ever tell you about me and Clint?”

“Only that you two used to date but other than that, he said the details were unclear,” Bucky mutters, leaning back against the wall.

Natasha laughs bitterly, arms crossing defensively over her chest. “Clint was sent to kill me. Changed his mind after I was dumb and fell for him. Only mistake I ever made,” she says, recalling fondly. “Convinced me to leave the KGB. Join S.H.I.E.L.D.. And, being in love, I did it. I would’ve followed him to the end of the earth if I could have.”

“What happened?”

“Five years later, Clint asked me to marry him. I told him no. I knew he wanted a family, kids, that whole nonsense. It was the one thing I couldn’t give him so I ran. He tracked me down in Kiev and said it was fine if I didn’t love him but I could still be his partner.” Bucky can see a tear slide silently down her face, even in the dark. “So I came back,” she says. “Watched him marry someone else, have kids with someone else, build that life with someone else.”

“Romanoff, I-” Bucky starts, words failing him.

“You know what? It’s _fine_ ,” she snaps. “I have an awesome niece and nephew and you learn how to adjust to being alone.” Natasha pushes past him and stalks of down the hall. She pauses, a hand on the entry way, turning back to Bucky. “Just don’t think you’re the only damaged goods around here, Barnes. We all have a story.”

She rounds the corner, leaving him alone in the darkness.

Bucky’s heart pounds in his head as he peers around the corner.

Steve is still engrossed with whatever he’s reading, unaware he’s being watched. Steve could go about his day without Bucky and life wouldn’t be any different. He had gone on this long without him, after all. But Bucky can’t imagine even a day without Steve before his entire world falls apart.

“ _But honestly, he could do better._ ”

Natasha’s words echo in his head, burrowing their way into his brain. It was the one thing he feared the most. Coming back to a world he didn’t know and falling for a man who still wouldn’t love him.

His hands shake and his heart begins to race. Bucky has to catch his breath; his chest feels like the repeated hits he took being a punching bag for the other Winter Soldiers. His vision whites out and he has to hold onto the wall to keep himself upright. “Come on, come on,” he whispers shakily to himself. Bucky’s skin crawls across his bones as he begins to hyperventilate.

Gasping for air, he chokes out weakly, “S-Steve? H-Help...” Bucky’s knees buckle underneath him and his metal hand puts a crack in the wood floor as he crashes to the ground, trying to catch himself. “S-Steve?”

Bucky feels a hand on his shoulder before his head spins and everything goes black.

He opens his eyes to find Steve shaking him gently. “Buck? Bucky?” Steve says softly, putting a damp cloth on his forehead. “You okay?”

Bucky blinks and realizes his back in his apartment, laid out on the couch. He thinks of all the times he was the one nursing Steve back from an asthma attack or a bout of pneumonia or measles and almost wants to laugh at the role reversals. “What happened?” he rasps, head still pounding.

“You were having a panic attack. I found you just before you passed out.”

Bucky’s face flushes red as he sits up, inching away from Steve. The younger man looks at him, confused. But there’s something underneath that Bucky knows can only be one thing: pity. His skin scorches as he shoves Steve back onto his heels. “Leave me alone,” he mutters, jaw clenching. Bucky stands up, looking for a place to hide.

“Bucky...”

“I said, leave me alone!” he roars, eyes burning. “What don’t you fucking understand? Go! Just fucking go! I don’t want you here!”

Steve looks at him, jaw clenching. “No,” he says resolutely. “I’m not leaving.”

Steve had been trying so hard to make amends over what happened a week ago and he’s just ripping the rug out from underneath them both. Toppling any hope they had for fixing this. He knew there was no way for them to be happy, no ending where this worked, so why was he even trying?

Bucky has to look away from the other man to keep everything together. “ _Please_ ,” he begs, beginning to lose whatever panic built stronghold is keeping him together.

“No, Bucky.”

A book flies across the room as Bucky hurls it at Steve’s head. “Are you so fucking stupid that you can’t take a hint? So fucking riotous that you can’t walk away when you should? I said I don’t want you here!” he screams, the tears threatening to spill over his eyes. “Poor fucking Bucky always needing Steve to come save the damn day! I don’t need you. Just send me back to Hydra and I won’t be such a goddamn burden anymore!”

There goes his house of cards.

Steve grabs his arm, pulling him back towards the couch. “Bucky _stop_! You’re not a burden, not to me.”

“You were _fine_ without me. You had a _life_ without me. _Friends_ without me. I’m just getting in the way,” Bucky snarls, sniffing defiantly. He shoves Steve again, sending him reeling backwards. “You never fucking needed me.”

“I’m not leaving you again,” Steve retorts. “The biggest mistake in my life was letting you go alone when you were drafted. I had to follow you into the war, otherwise I didn’t know what else to do. You were my only friend and I had to watch you leave me behind. You left and I couldn’t follow.” He takes a step closer to the older man. “Did you think about _that_? How many nights I stayed awake praying you weren’t fucking dead? Did you even think about _me_?”

Bucky’s shoulders tremble and he tries to stand firm. “I didn’t have a reason to.”

Steve flinches like he’s slapped him in the face. His mouth falls open as he whispers, “Fuck you, James.”

The doors slam closed and his name won’t stop ringing in his ears.

He wasn’t going to be a burden anymore. Steve didn’t need him anymore. Nobody needed him anymore.

The water rushes like a waterfall into the tub as Bucky stares into the white porcelain. “ _Fuck you, James._ ” Steve may have whispered it but he might have well carved it into his brain. The look on Steve’s face as Bucky dealt the final blow. Maybe he had completed Hydra’s mission after all.

His chest aches like someone took a carving knife to his sternum. His stomach flips and Bucky thinks he might hurl. His breath escapes him once again as the tears spill down his cheeks. All these months of progress he thought he had been making erased in a single phrase. “ _Fuck you, James._ ”

What was the point.

They’ve come back from a lot, but there was no coming back from this.

The water is ice cold as Bucky steps in the deep tub, shorts clinging to his legs. His T-shirt follows suit as he slides completely under the water, taking a shallow breath in. The weight of his metal arm sinks him to the bottom, holding him exactly where he deserves to be. The lights above him are dancing through the water as Bucky closes his eyes.

He remembers those early years of Hydra, the Halo, the waterboarding. Bucky, still reeling from having his brain thrown into a blender, being strapped down with that damp cloth over his face. Bucky, face engulfed in water. Bucky, drowning. His lungs burn but there’s no table to strap him down this time, only his own self loathing.

Bucky closes his eyes, the lights fading to the black of his mind.

“ _Fuck you, James._ ”

He wakes to bright lights and a punch to the chest, coughing up the water in his lungs. Rolling to his side, Bucky heaves mouthfuls of water out of his body, gasping for air. “You are so fucking stupid, you know that?” he hears spit at him from behind his back. “You get a second chance and _this_ is what you do with it?” He turns around to see Sam glaring down at him.

Bucky takes a deep inhale of oxygen and coughs weakly. “Leave me alone,” he gasps.

Sam looks at him hard. “I’ve known guys like you. Back at the VA, we’d get at least a call a week about losing someone. Guys that can’t escape what their minds have turned into,” he says. “Get that call that one of their buddies find them on the bathroom floor. Is that how you wanted Steve to find you?”

There’s a deep black pit in his mind that Bucky just wants to crawl into. Hide from the world. Tunnel into the darkness and let it eat him away. “I didn’t want _anyone_ to find me,” he spits, water dripping off his hair onto the tile floor. “You should’ve just walked back out and left me in there.” His voice shakes as his chin wavers. “You should have just left me alone and left me to die.”

“If the universe wanted you dead, it would’ve been back in 1945.”

“It _should’ve_ been in Italy,” Bucky mutters. “Zola experimented on me for weeks before Steve found me. Thought I was the weak one and I guess he was right.” He can never forget the searing pain, the screaming, the Halo prototype crushing his skull. He can still remember staring at the ceiling, mind floating as he desperately tried to tether it down by muttering his name, his rank, and his serial number.

Over and over and over again.

“I wanted them to just kill me,” he whispers, finally meeting Sam’s eyes. “I _begged_ them to kill me. Every day when they brought me out of the concrete hole they shoved me in I fought back, just hoping they would put a bullet in my head.”

Sam lets out a soft sigh, muttering, “Hey man, come on.”

“They wouldn’t, though. They just wanted to use me. So I just tried to remember who I was and hope that someone would come to get me.” Bucky laughs bitterly. “Didn’t think it’d be Steve, though.”

“You know he’d do anything for you,” Sam says, hopping off the floor and leaning a shoulder against the wall. “Even after you threw us off the god damn helicarrier, he still wasn’t going to hurt you. Didn’t want anyone else to try and take you in, in case you ended up dead.”

Bucky looks up at Sam, trying to force an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry about that, by the way.”

“No you’re not.”

He pushes his damp hair back off his face with shaking hands. “I almost killed you. I almost killed Steve,” he breathes shakily. “That’s all I can fucking do. Just kill, kill, kill.”

Sam crouches down in front of him and puts a hand on his shoulder. “That’s not you anymore. When you feel a panic attack coming on, take a deep breath and count to three. Let it out and count to three. Repeat. And if you feel like doing this again, I’m on the 50th floor. It gets better, I promise.”

“If you say so.”

He reaches out a hand and pulls Bucky off the floor. “This still doesn’t mean I like you.”

They sit on opposite sides of the couch and watch some cartoon movie about a mouse that can cook, each of them silent as the grave. Sam falls asleep around 3am after their second movie but Bucky still can’t bring himself to close his eyes. Not with the nightmares that have been coming far too often. Faces screaming at him from the darkness. Voices begging for their lives. He was lucky to get maybe an hour a night, four if Steve was curled around him protectively.

And now that clearly wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

_отличная работа, Солдат._

~~~

Steve doesn’t come out of his floor for almost a week and, when he does, he refuses to acknowledge Bucky. He tries everything to get Steve to look at him, talk to him, but nothing works. Bucky moves around the building like a ghost, hiding in corners, floating through the hallways silently.

“Steve, _please_ , I just want to talk.”

Steve ignores him, grabbing his jacket and heading out the door. It slams hard enough to rattle his bones. Bucky can feel his heart begin to race and his hands begin to shake. “Fuck, _fuck_!” he mutters under his breath. He tries to breathes in and out, tries counting to three each breath, just trying to calm himself, but nothing works. It feels just like the last panic attack, Bucky on his knees on the floor, an invisible hand wrapped around his throat.

He sits for hours in the corner of the hallway, metal hand twisting around his other wrist, rubbing it raw. Any physical pain to detract from the burning in his chest.

It’s late, moon rising late when the elevator dings open again, quick footsteps echoing against the tile as Steve steps out, racing past Bucky to the door at the end of the hall. Bucky scrambles off the floor, following after him desperately.

“Steve please!” he begs, grabbing the blond’s arm. “Just _stop_!”

Steve rips his forearm out of Bucky’s hand and grabs the door handle, jaw clenched, head down.

“After you left, I tried to kill myself.” The words echo in the hallway, deafening in the small space. Bucky’s eyes burn with tears and his metal hand wraps around his other wrist to try and quell the shaking. Steve’s hand pauses on the handle as the door cracks open, continuing to leave like he’s not even surprised. It feels like a noose around his throat as he chokes out brokenly, “Did you _know_?”

The door swings open fully.

“ _Did you know!?_ ” he screams, voice bleeding and raw. All the air rushes out of his lungs and he feels like he’s drowning all over again.

Steve disappears around the door as it slams shut, hinges rattling on the frame. The metal appendage can’t hold the other calm any more as it slams into the wall, a broken scream scraping its way up his throat. A crack slices its way up the wall as Bucky punches the wall over and over and over and over. He puts a hole in the wall that, unlike the one in his heart, can be patched with little effort.

He sinks to the floor in the elevator, face buried in his knees to muffle the sharp sobs that hit him like a freight car.

Bucky doesn’t even notice the elevator move, doesn’t notice the doors opening, doesn’t notice the body next to his until he feels a gentle hand on his shuddering shoulder. “James?” a quiet, concerned voice murmurs. “James, are you okay?”

Through his blurry vision, he can just make out long strawberry blond hair and a pair of deep blue eyes. He gulps for air, voice shaking as he stutters, “M-Ms. S-Sarah?”

The woman shakes her head, voice gentle as she says, “No, James, it’s me, Pepper.”

He slumps against her body, arms thrown needfully around her thin frame as sobs wrack his body. She cradles his head against her shoulder tenderly, shushing him quietly. Everyone had been trying to tell him to pull himself together, to bury all the pain he had been feeling for months, and no one had just let him be sad. But here is Pepper, not telling him it’s going to get better, that it’s okay, but just letting him let go. Grateful is too insufficient of a word for how he feels for the woman right now.

“I know I will never understand what you have gone through, James, but if you need anything, and I mean _anything_ , please come see me,” Pepper murmurs into his hair, hand smoothing over the tangled strands. “It’s okay to not be okay.” Her voice is warm as she wipes his face dry. “You’re alive, and that’s a miracle in itself. Sometimes just surviving is enough.”

She pulls him back so she can look him in the eye. Bucky’s chest still rattles with the sobs he’s been burying down in his stomach since the elevator doors opened but he still does everything in his power to meet her gaze. “Steve will come around,” Pepper says, cupping his blotchy face with her hands. “He has been worrying about you since the moment he saw you and he hasn’t had a single moment to be selfish. He has been so strong for so long, even before you came back, James, and he can’t pretend around you anymore. He just needs time.”

His voice is throaty, thick like he’s screaming through a foot of water as he stammers, “I l-love him.”

Pepper smiles sadly, knowingly, both of them on the opposite sides of love. The easy and the hard, Pepper and Steve on the other side of the divide from him and Tony. And with each mistake, each selfish moment, the chasm grows, no easy way to get across. So Pepper smiles, lips pressed thin as she nods. “I know. I can see your face when you look at him.”

“I can’t tell him. I don’t know _how_.”

Pepper’s thumb drags across the high rise of his cheekbone, swiping the salt away. “Just tell him what he already knows,” she says. “I think he’s been waiting to hear it for quite some time.”

So he waits. Waits and waits and waits in the common room, pacing the room alone like he’s trying to wear holes in the floor. His feet and ankles ache by the time the clock turns to 3AM. Nobody comes in or out, the entire building silent around his footsteps. It isn’t until an hour later when Steve comes through the common room door.

And Bucky knows he knows he’s there because he ducks his head, turns his body, anything to avoid him.

“Steve, wait.” Steve slams his jacket in one of the chairs hard enough to make it shake, his free hand running angrily through his hair. Bucky can see the other man’s blue eyes burning through the floor as he storms toward the elevator.

He steps quickly, trying to keep up but, like always, he still falls behind. “Steve, stop,” he begs, the younger man ignoring him as he’s done for the past three weeks. It’s killing him inside and nothing but Steve’s touch can heal his soul. His feet fall still as his arms drop to his side. “Please... I loved you, you know.”

The other man freezes less than a foot away from the elevator, like a deer in his gun’s sight.

“I loved you so much, back when things were normal. I loved you for so long, I didn’t know who I was without you. I loved you longer than I loved myself, if I even loved myself at all.”

The words come out before he can even stop them and it feels like he’s carved out his own heart and thrown it on the floor still beating. His head feels weak as he struggles to take a breath.

“You know why I never said anything before I got shipped out?” Bucky says, voice strained. “It was to protect you.”

Steve turns but doesn’t look at him. Bucky can see the muscles in his shoulder tense under his shirt. Can see the spot where his jaw clenches under his skin.

“I know what you’re like. If I had told you that I loved you back when we were sixteen, you wouldn’t have been careful enough. Would’ve said the wrong thing to the wrong person. Would’ve ended up like William Brand. Remember him?” Bucky asks as Steve hangs his head. “Someone found out he was queer and threw him off the fire escape. You would’ve ended up just like that, dead in some alley and it would’ve been because of me.”

Steve looks up to face him and, for the first time in weeks, Bucky isn’t wincing under his glare.

“I was going to tell you after Azzano, after you could defend yourself, but you were, _this_ ” -he motions at Steve’s shield- “and people _knew_ you. You were a captain in the army, what you always wanted, and if you had to go home with a dishonorable discharge, you never would’ve forgiven me.” Bucky shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans, just trying to get them to stop shaking. “I _hated_ watching you fall for her.”

“Her name is Peggy.”

“I _know_ what her name is.” Bucky’s face burns pink. “God, do you know how much it hurt watching you look at her the same way you looked at me for twelve years?”

A bitter laugh falls out of Steve’s mouth as a look of contempt clouds his features. “Like when I had to watch you chase every skirt that passed by? Was that real or were you just overcompensating?”

“I wasn’t going to lead you on. I thought... maybe if if I spared you the idea...” His palms are slick with sweat and his mouth feels like it’s covered in cotton. Steve raises an eyebrow in annoyance at Bucky’s inability to spit anything out. “I thought if I kissed enough girls, I could stop wanting you. Thought if I kissed enough girls you would stop wanting me.”

Steve’s voice is low and cracking around the edges as he says, “You thought wrong.”

Bucky’s legs feel weak as he says, “We should’ve had a lifetime together. That goddamn war robbed us of everything. Robbed me of you. Robbed me of myself.”

There’s a low thud as Steve drops his shield. “I don’t even know if you’re the same man I used to love,” Steve says, his shoulders slumping. He looks up at Bucky, heart visibly breaking inside his chest, and says, “All I wanted was to grow old with you. I loved you so much before you left.”

His stomach flips at the past tense. “Do you love me now?”

Steve’s brow furrows and his mouth twists. “I don’t know. I thought I did at first but I’m not sure anymore.” He looks at Bucky solemnly and asks, “But what about you? Do you even love me? _Can_ you even love me?” The lump in Bucky’s throat grows bigger and he has no idea why he’s suddenly mute. Steve’s face turns pink as he sighs. “If you love me, you don’t love me in a way I understand.”

“Seventy years of someone else owning your life can do that,” he chokes, swallowing the sob in his chest. “You think I wanted to end up like this?” Bucky sniffs and tries to calm his breathing but he knows it’s useless. “In my head, I do everything right but I know it’s not true, and I can’t fucking do this alone,” he says. “I _need_ you.”

Steve stares at the floor before silently walking over to him and wrapping his arms tight around Bucky’s body. It feels like a straight jacket to calm the screaming heartbreak between the two of them. Bucky tucks his face in Steve’s firm shoulder, his eyes finally emptying their reservoirs.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, voice muffled in the younger man’s damp shirt.

“I know. I know,” the blond mutters quietly.

The sharp edge in his voice still isn’t gone and it feels like a knife against Bucky’s neck. 

~~~

“I swear to god, Barnes, if you don’t make a move in the next twenty seconds...”

“Okay, okay, just let me...” He finally drops the red disk into the tray and looks across the game at Clint, smiling smugly. “Connect four, douchebag.”

The shorter man narrows his eyes, mentally counting the game pieces before letting g out a frustrated groan as he uncrosses his legs and kicks the game over. “I hate you so much. I don’t know how you do it. Can’t play poker to save your life,” he says, “can’t play Pictionary even though you went to art school, but you’re a Connect Four savant? Garbage.”

Bucky chuckles a little and begins picking the red and black pieces off the floor. “So I’m guessing there isn’t going to be a tenth round?”

“Not a chance,” Clint says, stretching his leg out to kick him in the knee. “Go get me a beer, buddy. It’s the least you can do for a poor loser like me.”

As much as he wants to make a sharp quip back, he just rolls his eyes and hauls himself off the floor, heading into Clint’s kitchen. There are crayon drawings and an ultrasound image hanging on the fridge as Bucky grabs a beer bottle and pops the cap off with his metal fingers before bringing it back out to the younger man. “Here’s your swill,” he says as Clint grabs the bottle from him. “Surprised you can’t buy better beer on a superhero salary.”

“I got bills to pay,” the shorter man says. “Not all of us get senior’s discount.”

He laughs, actually laughs for once, and it feels good. Everyone else, especially Steve, has been walking on eggshells around him since he was allowed to leave his floor, but Clint was always there to just shoot the shit with him. Bucky was never ex-Hydra, was never the Winter Soldier, but could just be himself, as much of himself that was left.

“So how’s it been going?” Clint asks as Bucky sits back on the floor, cross legged. “Nat told me you and Steve had some fight a couple weeks ago. You two patching things up okay?”

Bucky rolls his eyes and pulls his feet in, shoulders curling slightly. “You know, for a spy, Romanoff can’t keep a secret to save her life. The girl sure knows how to gossip,” he says, the levity in his voice not as convincing as he tries to make it.

“Oh, she can keep a secret, she just _chooses_ to tell me everything. We’re friends like that,” the other man says, leaning back on his hands. He nudges Bucky’s knee with his foot and says, “You know, we’re friends too, Barnes. You can trust me with shit.” Clint looks at him almost expectantly, like he’s waiting for something that may or may not ever come.

He shakes his head, staring at his lap as he mutters, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Clint lets out another groan and says, “Come on, you and Steve. _You and Steve_. It’s a thing, isn’t it? Or am I completely misreading the longing stares you two keep throwing any time you see each other?”

Bucky can feel his face flush a deep red and is thankful for the hair that falls over his eyes. His heart thumps faster and faster in his chest until his head feels faint and he thinks he might pass out. Shaking his head, he chokes out, “It’s not... we’re not...” It’s not a lie, not outright. Even though things have been getting better the past week, he and Steve have been dancing around each other uneasily.

But there _have_ been nights of wary touching, of fingers laced together as they lay a little too close together, of hands spread across bare chests. They hadn’t kissed since the night before the CIA came, and they hadn’t tried to put a label on it, in case what they were building crumbled again.

He sighs and scrubs a hand over his face before muttering, “Fine, it’s a thing. But I swear to god, Barton, if you tell anyone else, even Natasha-”

Clint pumps his fist and says, “Hell yes. Nat owes me $500 and a new bow. What a sucker.”

Bucky points a finger at him and says, “You said you wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“Oh, Nat already knows,” Barton says, taking a swig of his beer. “She and I had a bet going. I said you two lovebirds were already together, she said neither of you would make a move until the New Year. So what’s it like with Cap? He the same righteous idiot around you that he is with us?”

He shrugs again, picking at a hole in the knee of his jeans. “I don’t know. I’ve been so...” He pauses, feeling the tremble in his fingers returning and wraps his hands right around his ankles to calm himself. “I’ve been so fucked up that I think he doesn’t know what to do with me. I feel like I’m just waiting to fall apart again and he’s just waiting to have to put me back together.” He’s quiet for a couple minutes before he finally admits, “I started some dumb fight and then tried to kill myself because of it.”

Clint is silent before saying, “Shit, man. You doing better now?”

Bucky shrugs. “I guess. But it doesn’t really feel fair, you know? Like he deserves better than me.”

Clint points his beer bottle at him and says, “Trust me, if Cap wanted someone else, he would’ve found someone a long time ago. He’s all about that unrequited love shit. You just happened to back fall into his lap.”

Looking up at the sandy haired man, Bucky knows that he’s right, but that doesn’t mean the guilt doesn’t still eat him from the inside out. He loves Steve, he knows he does, and Steve must love him too, otherwise he would have left already. “How do you know if it’s a healthy relationship though?” he asks hesitantly, his cheeks heating up again. “Sometimes I don’t know if we’re together because we want to be or if we’re just too scared to exist without each other.”

“Have you gone on an actual date or anything? Done something fun instead of just fucking around in all the sad baggage both of you carry around?”

He laughs a little too dejectedly as he says, “I can barely go out of the building without having a panic attack. I haven’t been on a date since 1943 and those were all with girls, since being queer could get you thrown in a jail cell. I don’t even know if I could hold Steve’s hand in public without thinking the cops are coming.” Bucky can feel Clint’s watchful eyes intent on him but he doesn’t meet the other man’s gaze. “I don’t know how to do this.”

The younger man points to the kitchen and says, “Go get me the chips and I’ll give you some pointers.”

With Clint’s help, Bucky rents out a theater at the local cinema for some romance film that has gotten good reviews. He picks up flowers from the stand downstairs while Steve is out on an assignment. He puts on candles and orders takeout because he’s never been a great cook and 70 years without practice hasn’t done him any favors. He pulls his hair back into a low bun and Bucky even pulls a clean button up shirt from the back of the closet, changing out of the sweatshirt and tank top uniform he seems to have been existing in for far too long.

Steve comes home dirty and sweaty to find him standing awkwardly next to the dining table.

His shield drops down limply from his arm as the blond looks him up and down, lips parting slightly. Bucky tucks a loose strand of hair behind his ear and says, “I planned a date night. Food is coming in an hour. Figured that was enough time for you to get cleaned up.”

A small smile pulls at Steve’s chapped lips and he sets his shield down against the bookcase. “Yeah, yeah,” he mutters quietly, already working on the hooks of his uniform. “I’ll go shower quick.” Steve discards his jacket and heads down the hall, pausing to look back at Bucky, his smile spreading a little softer, a little easier.

Maybe Clint wasn’t crazy after all.

Steve comes out of the bathroom after twenty minutes, skin scrubbed clean, hair neatly parted like he used to wear it in the 40’s. Bucky’s heart skips a beat as he watches the younger man adjust his tie, looking back up at him with a quiet smile. “You look good,” Bucky says, a warmth spreading from his stomach up to his cheeks.

The blond tucks his hands in the pockets of his slacks and lets out a mildly anxious breath. “You look good too, Buck.” Steve lets out a short laugh and says, “Why the hell are we so nervous about this? Are _you_ nervous? I’m nervous as hell.”

“We’ve never had a real date,” he says, trying to let his smile relax. Steve is doing a great job acting like Bucky hadn’t spent the entire day prior to him leaving on the mission lost in his own head, refusing to let Steve touch him at all, and Bucky is so grateful for him. He holds out his hand gently and says, “I figured it was time we had something normal in our lives.”

Steve crosses the room and takes his hand, the warmth of his palm spreading up Bucky’s arm.

“Thank you for this,” he hums, voice low and soft like warm velvet, and Bucky thinks maybe they’re back on the right track.

The Italian food they ordered is good, but he isn’t sure it was worth the exorbitant cost. But the clams are still good as Bucky eats quietly, listening to Steve recap the mission to him, complete with hand movements and the salt shaker standing in for the quinjet.

Steve insists on waking the six blocks to the cinema instead of taking one of the private cars downstairs and Bucky goes along with it because he should, because he wants to. But there are still crowds, and crowds make him anxious, so his skin is absolutely crawling by the time they get to the theater. The empty room is a godsend though and he finally lets out the breath that had been buried in his chest.

Looking around at the empty seats, the younger man strips his coat and gloves off as he begins to climb the steps. “Come on, Buck. Gotta get the best seats.” He follows the blond up the steps to the back row, settling in the middle seat with their popcorn. Bucky jumps slightly when Steve puts a hand a little too high on his thigh, but tries to relax as the other man runs his thumb soothingly. “It’s okay, it’s just us.”

The movie begins and he doesn’t make Steve move his hand.

Halfway through the movie, Bucky realizes that he’s barely been watching it at all and has just been watching the way the cool blues and pinks of the movie’s cinematography has been bathing Steve’s high cheekbones and strong jaw in light.

His eyes sweep across the empty seats and he grabs the popcorn from between the two of them, setting it on the floor.

The blond turns to him, brow furrowing as he asks, “You okay?”

Bucky nods, wetting his lips before asking, “Can I kiss you? Is that okay?”

Steve nods and doesn’t complain about the question. They’ve had so many talks about boundaries since the incident and the word consent has come up often. Everything was about questions with them now, of insistence that they were both in the moment.

He threads his fingers through the blond hair that had been growing out slightly at the name of Steve’s neck and kisses the younger man gently. It’s soft and good and it feels right this time. Feels more like the past two times should have felt instead of the hell that had been staining them. Bucky deepens the kiss and can feel Steve’s hand on his waist, steadying himself.

The movie continues playing as they lose themselves kissing each other needily.

They’ll miss it but they can’t afford to miss _this_. Not after all this time.

~~~

Two weeks before Christmas, they take a walk around Manhattan, late at night with their hat brims pulled low over their faces. It’s bitterly cold and Steve has his gloved hands shoved deep in the pockets of his coat. Their boots crunch in the icy snow, they had gotten almost two inches the night before, and the Christmas lights reflect off their cold faces.

“Do you want to do anything for Hanukkah?” he asks softly as they turn down 50th St.

Bucky shrugs, cheeks pink in the cold as he says, “I don’t know. I haven’t done anything for it since I left for the war.” He glances up at him quickly and Steve knows how much the other man wishes he could go back to when things were normal, back when he knew how to celebrate.

“We don’t have to do a lot, we can just light some candles, I’ll get you some little gifts,” Steve says, nudging the brunet with his elbow.

“You don’t have to get me anything,” Bucky says quietly.

“What if I want to?” he asks as they approach Rockefeller Center, the lights of the huge Christmas tree gleaming. “I want things to start getting back to normal. Or at least as normal as they can be.” Steve reaches down and carefully laces their fingers together. Part of him is expecting Bucky to pull away, recoil a his touch, but he doesn’t, only tightens the grip.

“I want a new knife,” Bucky says and Steve catches the smirk on the other man’s face.

He laughs, tucking their hands into his pocket. “I’m not buying you a knife for Hanukkah, Bucky,” he deadpans.

“What about a _little_ one? Like, 6 inches max.”

Steve rolls his eyes and pulls the brunet closer, their shoulders bumping together. “I’ll figure out something good, okay? _Not_ a knife.”

They disappear into the growing crowd of tourists in front of the tree and Steve is thankful for the anonymity. He can see Bucky grow wary at the flashes of cameras, ducking his head to avoid being in the background of any photos. Steve leans in and mutters quietly, “Hey, it’s okay, nobody’s going to recognize you.”

Bucky lets out a shaky breath, trying to relax, and Steve knows that he’s been trying to hard to get used to venturing outside the tower, but it’s still hard.

There are carolers and kids running and people ice skating and it’s just pure unadulterated joy. When Bucky looks at him again, all the lights in the Center reflecting in his blue eyes, Steve stops them gently. His heart pounds in his chest as he asks, voice low and hushed, “Can I kiss you?”

All he can see is how the red and gold lights fall across the sharp curve of Bucky’s cheekbones, cutting through the dark shadows under the brim of his baseball cap. “What if someone sees?” the older man whispers.

Steve tips Bucky’s hat back off his head and drops their interlaced fingers. “I don’t care,” he murmurs, gloved fingers sliding up the other man’s neck. It feels like the first time they kissed, barely weeks after Bucky had gotten home, quietly needy, kissing each other to make sure they both still existed. A press of lips together and cold noses against cold cheeks, hidden away from the world.

He can feel the other man sigh softly into his mouth, one hand wrapping around Steve’s waist. If he could, he would freeze the moment and just exist in this one perfect second forever.

When he pulls away, Bucky’s eyes are still closed, dark eyelashes spread across his golden cheeks. The older man blinks his eyes open, the pale blue irises bright as he smiles softly. “Steve... I-”

“I know, Buck. I know.”

He knows what Bucky is going to say and it’s not meant for a moment like this. It’s meant for one with just the two of them curled up in bed, bodies naked and warm after they’ve spent hours folded together. Not one where anyone else could possibly hear those three words.

They kiss again when they get back to the tower, Steve leant back against the arm of the couch, Bucky stretched out between his legs. They kiss languidly, one of his hands worked through the dark strands, the other counting the vertebrae down the older man’s back. Steve’s half hard and he knows Bucky is too but they’re too lazy, too tired, to do anything about it.

So they settle for kissing each other long and hard until the moon starts to turn pink with the sunrise.

Over the next six days, Steve sneaks out early to go shopping, wrapping Bucky’s presents late into the night as the other man snores softly in his bedroom. He doesn’t know how it’s all going to play out, but he hopes that the last night of Hanukkah is one to remember.

The first night of Hanukkah, they light a candle and eat burnt latkes together on the couch. “Sorry I’m not much of a cook,” Bucky says with a guilty smile.

“They’re still good,” he says, handing over the small box. As the metal fingers carefully tear back the blue paper, Steve soaks up Bucky’s soft smile. “I figured you missed losing at poker like you did during the war.”

The brunet chuckles slightly, flipping the cards over in his hand, and says, “I bet I’ve gotten better.”

“Only one way to find out.”

They play poker late into the night and Steve wins every single time.

On the second night, Bucky unwraps a big, thick, soft sweater and immediately slips it over his T-shirt, burying his face in the soft wool. “This is great, Steve. I love it.”

“Well, blue was always your color.”

The third night, Steve’s heart swells at the older man’s dumbfounded face as he opens a glossy picture book about the moon landing. Bucky flips through the pictures, fingers trailing over the images of astronauts and space ships. “Holy shit, is this real? Did they really go to the moon?”

He nods and kisses the other man’s temple, murmuring against warm skin, “They sure did, Buck.”

Bucky spends the entirety of the fourth night of Hanukkah taking picture after picture, as fast as his new Polaroid camera will spit them out. Small shots of Steve’s face in the low light from the menorah, pictures he takes of Bucky’s dark eyes intently watching him behind the camera, a slightly shaky picture of Steve, shirtless, draped across the leather couch.

“Will you buy me more film?” Bucky hums as he takes a picture of his metal hand spread across Steve’s chest.

“Any time you want me to.”

On the fifth night, he spends half an hour trying to teach Bucky how to use the iPod he unwraps. It takes a couple tries for Bucky not to blow out his eardrums turning the headphones up too loud, big band swing blaring from the speakers.

“I _like_ this one!” Bucky shouts at him before Steve manages to scroll the volume down.

“I can add some more music if you want,” he says, pulling the headphones off the brunet’s head. “Sam knows a bunch of good bands that I think you’ll like.”

“Sam has terrible taste in everything, so I highly doubt that.”

Things get more sentimental on the 6th night. Steve pulls the gift out of the closet as Bucky lights the next candle, nibbling on the edge of a sufganiyot they had picked up earlier that day from a bakery in Brooklyn.

The box is heavy, not just physically, but heavy with the emotional weight of what lays inside. He tries to keep the careful smile on his face but it waves when he hands the box over. Bucky looks at him worriedly, forehead creasing as he asks, “Steve, is everything okay? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he murmurs, “this one is just special.”

When Bucky opens the box, he trails his fingers over the dark leather cover before cracking the book open. Steve watches him flip through the pages of family photos, the last that existed. He had visited Leah Barnes at the hospice, at the end of her life, and begged for the pictures to be handed over to him. Anything for Bucky to remember the family that had never stopped missing him.

“Is this... my family?” Bucky asks quietly, hands smoothing over the photos.

“Yeah, there’s your mom and dad, you, and Rebby, Hannah, and Leah,” Steve says, pointing to a family portrait.

The older man flips through the photos for a while until he looks up and asks quietly, “What happened to my family? Are any of my sisters still alive? Do I have any nieces or nephews? Anyone?”

Steve sighs and takes the album from him. “Rebby went into nursing after you fell. Went to Vietnam during a war so she could try and save people. She died in 1959 when the hospital she was working at was hit by enemy fire. She was the second Barnes, after you, to be awarded a Medal of Honor posthumously.”

Bucky lets out a sad, shaky laugh as he says, “She was always following in my footsteps.”

“Yeah, she was.” The lights from the candles bathe them in a soft glow as the older man tucks his body into Steve’s. “Your mom passed from heart disease in 1975, and your dad two years later. They still lived in the same house until they died. Hannah got married in 1957 and had two kids in the 60’s. They were all killed in 1983 when a truck sideswiped their station wagon,” he says quietly, recounting the last of Bucky’s family. “Leah’s still alive but she’s very sick. We could go visit her, if you want.”

The other man looks up at Steve, eyes glassy, and shakes his head. “I want her to die with the memories of who I used to be, not who I’ve been turned into. My baby sister doesn’t need that.”

“If you change your mind,” he murmurs, wrapping an arm around Bucky’s shoulders, “she really wants to see you.”

On the seventh day, they sit in quiet silence, Bucky’s hands wrapped tightly around the folded flag that had been handed to Johanna Barnes at her son’s funeral after he was presumed killed in action. The funeral Steve had missed, frozen in the Arctic.

On the last night of Hanukkah, Steve lights the last candle and pulls the small box out of his pocket. Bucky raises an eyebrow at the small size and asks, “Kind of a let down after all the big boxes huh? You know you’re supposed to save the best gift for the last night, right?”

He just smiles gently and says, “I did.”

His heart beats heavy in his chest as Bucky pulls off the wrapping paper, exposing the smooth velvet box. The older man freezes, murmuring, “Steve...” The hinges on the box creak in the silence as he opens it, the simple silver ring glinting in the candlelight.

“Will you marry me?” Steve asks in a low voice as Bucky turns to face him.

“Steve... we’ll be arrested, we can’t...”

“It’s legal now. Has been for a few years here in New York. It’s not like it was back in the 40’s. People like us don’t have to hide anymore,” he says, threading his fingers carefully through Bucky’s hair. “I don’t wait until there’s nothing left of you for me to keep.”

Bucky leans into his touch and closes his eyes, sighing quietly. “I want to marry you,” he starts, voice thick as he looks down at the ring again. “But I can’t marry you right now. I’m still not myself and I’m still putting my life back together. It wouldn’t be fair for either of us to do it right now.” He looks up at Steve, giving him a wistful smile as he says, “I’m not saying no, I’m just asking you to give me some time.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve waited this long, I don’t mind waiting a little longer.”

~~~

After weeks of being fine, after weeks of improvement, Bucky suddenly plummets.

Steve tries for almost three days to pull him out of bed, but he’s just dead weight in the mattress, half lidded eyes glazed over. So all he can do is clear out the uneaten food he brings and comb the knots out of Bucky’s long dark hair. He remembers doing it with his mother’s hair those last few months, when she was too weak to get out of bed.

The comb hits snag after snag and Steve picks the knots out of the strands carefully. “I wish I knew what was going on in your head. I wish I could carry it all for you,” he murmurs quietly, separating the hair apart. “I wouldn’t love you any less.”

The only answer he gets is Bucky’s ragged breathing.

“Do you think Ma knew about me?” he asks the silence. “Knew that I fell in love with you when I was 16? Knew that I was different?”

He thinks back to Bucky showing up at his apartment in the pouring rain, the twelve year old holding his dislocated arm close to his body as blood ran down the gash in his forehead and the split in his lip. _“Can I come in?”_ Bucky had asked, voice shaking as he tried to put on a brave face. _“I don’t have anywhere else to go.”_

Steve had seen the belt marks when he helped his ma had dressed his friend’s wounds but knew better than to ask. And he had never said anything, but he had laid awake that night on the spare bed mat on the floor, listening to Bucky muffle the sobs that came from his bed.

Abel and Johanna Barnes must have known about their beloved son’s terrible secret.

Bucky’s eyes close as Steve combs through the roots, the rest of his hair detangled. There was no point asking if he was okay at this point, because Steve knows he isn’t, but it doesn’t make the sudden departure sting any less. So Steve locks away the ache in his chest, covers the brunet’s shoulders back up with the blankets, and tries to keep himself occupied until Bucky is ready to come back to him.

He and Natasha walk a few blocks to the Israeli place that night when Sam goes out drinking with some of his Air Force buddies and Steve gets a chance to just relax.

“Stark says he’s working on some new taser gauntlets for me to try out,” Nat says, shoveling hummus into her mouth. “I told Sam he could be the first victim and, not gonna lie, he seemed a little excited about it.”

He laughs, deep in his chest, and rolls his eyes. “You’ve got him tied around your finger, you know that, right?” Steve asks, grabbing a couple more falafel. “Things been going okay with you two?”

“Sam’s nice,” she says, trying to hide the way the corners of her mouth curl. “And I’m not just saying it like ‘oh he’s nice, he buys me flowers, blah blah blah’ but he’s actually _nice_. And he’s not intimidated by me, which is a first.” Natasha ducks her head slightly, curly hair falling into her face as she says, “It feels comfortable, you know? Like when Clint and I were still a thing.”

“Do you love him?” Steve asks, grinning when Nat narrows her eyes at him. “Just a question!”

She shrugs, leaning back in her chair. “I don’t know. He said it to me a couple weeks ago and it kind of freaked me out. At least he doesn’t want kids, so I don’t have to go through round two of that,” Natasha says, putting her feet up on his legs. “I like Sam a lot, but I’m in no rush for it to be anything other than what it is now.” She motions to him with her fork. “What about you and Barnes though?”

Steve raises an eyebrow at her and says, “What _about_ me and Bucky?”

“He’s been staying at your suite for, like, a month and you two are basically attached at the hip. I see the way you two look at each other, even if everyone else is too stupid to notice it.”

He knows he freezes a little too suddenly at Nat’s words so he tries to laugh it off, but it comes out strained. “We’re just friends, Nat. We haven’t seen each other in almost 70 years,” Steve says and normally as he can. “And with everything Bucky’s been through, we’ve just gotten a little closer than we were before.”

The redhead gives him a look. “Don’t try and bullshit me, Rogers. You’re a terrible liar.”

Running a hand over his face, Steve sighs quietly. “I love him, Nat,” he says softly. “I always did, even when we were kids.” He thinks back to Bucky’s face when he unwrapped the ring box. That fearful race to try and hide in the face of panic and Steve knows what that feels like right now. “I asked him to marry me.”

Natasha is the one to raise an eyebrow this time, but all the levity has gone from her voice as she says, “Jesus, Rogers, you’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Please don’t tell anyone, Natasha. You know the shit storm it’ll cause if word gets out,” he warns, voice barely above a whisper. “Bucky’s already got enough on his plate without worrying about this.”

She rolls her eyes and kicks his shoulder. “ _Why_ would I tell anyone? You deserve a happy ending for once,” she says earnestly. “I’m just pissed I didn’t get to play wingman.”

Steve smiles gingerly and says, “Does it help if you’re the only person I’ve told? Nobody else knows about me. Knows about us.” Natasha’s smirk fades and she looks at him like all the walls she’s built around herself have disappeared for a moment. Like she’s the Natasha that should have been, carrying the secret of the Steve that trusted her with it. She wipes her eyes quickly and he can’t help but bark out a short laugh. “Natasha Romanoff, are you _crying_?!”

“Shut up and keep your stupid gay happy emotions to yourself okay?” she snaps, throwing a slice of pita bread at him. “You make me sick.”

Steve walks her to the bar to meet up with Sam but ducks out, muttering in Sam’s ear, “I gotta go, man! We’ll go out together soon, okay?” The wind has picked up and it has to only be 20 degrees outside when he walks back to the Tower. His cheeks are raw from the cold as he rises the elevator back up, coat pulled tight around him.

Bucky is still in bed when he opens the door, the older man curled into a tight ball underneath the blankets.

“Hey Buck,” he mutters, stripping out of his clothes and crawling under the covers. The brunet’s body is warm as Steve curls around it, pressing his nose into the dip in the back of Bucky’s neck. “I’m so sorry that we’re stuck in the middle, here,” he hums against the other man’s skin. “We’ll get through this, I promise.”

The older man lifts his arm silently, moving on his own for the first time in days.

He slides his arm up, wrapping it tight around Bucky’s chest, pulling them closer together. His skin begins to warm and Steve’s eyes slip closed tiredly. Sleep pulls him down, numbness spreading quickly through his body.

He thinks he hears Bucky murmur something but he can’t stay awake any longer.

Steve wakes up halfway through the night and finds the other side of the bed empty. “Bucky?” he murmurs tiredly, rubbing his eyes. The only answer he gets is the soft tick of the clock from the living room.

He pulls on a sweatshirt and sweatpants, his bare feet cold against the wood floor as he pads into the living room. The lights are off but the city provides a hazy orange glow across the apartment. A cold breeze chills his bones as Steve notices the open door out to the patio. “Bucky?” he calls again, stepping out into the cold late December night.

Snowflakes catch on his eyelashes, settling on the bridge of his nose.

Bucky is curled up on the double chaise chair, eyes closed. The thin layer of snow seems to glow, hovering over him like a fleece blanket. He’s snoring softly, hands tucked between his legs. Steve steps as quietly as he can and crouches down, brushing the light dusting of snow off Bucky’s sleeping face. The older man sighs quietly and blinks an eye open. “Mmm? Steve?”

“What are you doing out here?” he asks. “It’s freezing, Buck.”

The brunet shrugs a shoulder and pulls his sweatshirt sleeves over his hands. “You’d think after 70 years of being stuck in Russia, I’d want to just find a beach somewhere and bury myself in the sand.” There’s a sharp edge in his voice that puts a bitter taste in Steve’s mouth, but at least he’s talking again. “Sometimes I just want to pretend I’m back in cryo,” he snaps.

“Bucky...”

“It’s fine,” Bucky grumbles, his eyes pinned to the floor. “It’s just hard not constantly worrying about when I have to see the Halo again, not constantly being on guard. I keep waking up in the middle of the night thinking some Hydra agent is going to drag me out of bed and put a gun in my hand and I just can’t shake the feeling.” He looks Steve, blue eyes wide. “Am I ever going to be okay?”

Steve brushes the snow off before he crawls up onto the chaise, muttering, “Scoot over.”

Bucky grumbles quietly but makes room, curling up close into Steve’s warm body. “You know,” he says quietly, “you don’t have to stay with me if you don’t want to. I’ll be fine on my own.”

Steve shifts onto his side and looks at Bucky seriously. “I’m not going anywhere, Buck. To the end of the line, remember?”

He closes his eyes when the other man reaches up and traces the faint scar by his eyebrow, running down the corner of his eyelid. He can feel his heart thumping in his chest, jittery from Bucky’s touch. Steve imagines Bucky’s eyes watching the twitch of the smile that he can’t stop and the small sigh he lets out when Bucky’s hand brushes over his eyelashes, brushing away the snow that has settled there.

The hand is cold as he runs a metal finger, tracing the high rise of Steve’s cheekbones. He tracks it down over the straight bridge of his nose and down the blond’s lips. His voice is quiet, echoing in the dark, as he says hesitantly, “I think... I love you.”

Steve opens his eyes and gazes into the storm blue across from him. The hint of grey is gone for once and all Steve can see is sky. His throat feels like sandpaper as he swallows.

“Bucky...”

Any other words that might’ve come out of his mouth are swallowed down Bucky’s throat. Bucky kisses him desperately, seeking some kind of deliverance from the air in Steve’s lungs. Every inch of his body burns like he has his hand on his mother’s wood stove, even in the cold New York air. Steve slides his body closer to the other man, his hand coming up under his sweatshirt to cover Bucky’s racing heart.

Bucky melts under his touch, letting out a soft groan. He pushes harder into the kiss, grabbing the short hair at the back of Steve’s neck. “I think I love you,” he repeats, mumbling the words against the younger man’s lips.

Steve opens his eyes to find Bucky’s blown pupils staring back at him. Bucky. _His Bucky._

“I think I love you too.”

Bucky’s bittersweet smile stirs something deep inside Steve’s heart. The grateful raise of his eyebrow, the desolate drop of his mouth. Steve doesn’t know how long Bucky’s been waiting to hear those words, but he’s starting to think it’s long overdue.

But when he kisses Bucky again, and Bucky’s hands slide up the front of his shirt, Steve’s head spins. Somewhere in between Bucky slipping his tongue into his mouth and Steve’s hand shoving down the front of the brunet’s pants, Steve seems to black out. His mind goes numb and his body goes on autopilot. It’s a mess of hands and skin and bodies slicked together and Steve doesn’t come back down to earth until he’s seeing stars.

He stares up at the night sky, chest heaving on the deep chaise. Steve can almost see the steam rising from their bodies, drifting into the cold grey expanse above them. Bucky lifts his head off his arm and looks at Steve, face still flushed. “Why did that take so long?” he asks with a short laugh.

Steve runs his eyes over Bucky’s bare frame and can’t help but smile. “I don’t know,” he says with a smirk. “But I have to say, for two 90 something year old men, we’re still pretty spry.”

Bucky laughs, actually _laughs_ , and Steve has to stop and remind himself to breathe.

~~~

It’s New Year’s Eve, and the ghosts finally catch up with him.

It doesn’t start as screaming, not at first. Bucky jolts awake at 3am, his skin crawling, and all he can hear is whispers all around him, worming their way through his ears, into his spine. Begging, pleading, prayers. He doesn’t know exactly who they all are, but he has a pretty good idea.

They build over the next few hours, turning into nails on a chalkboard by the time Steve stirs in bed next to him. The blond blinks his eyes open, murmuring tiredly, “You okay, Buck?”

His jaw cracks as he hinges it, pressing the metal heel of his hand into his left ear. His own screaming adds to the noise as Bucky chokes out quietly, “Uh huh, ‘m fine.” He pulls on his sweatpants and hoodie, toes sinking into the warm carpet. Steve’s mattress is harder than his own but it’s a welcomed relief. He’s finally stopped feeling like he’s going to sink into the floor. The wooden frame creaks as Bucky stands up, Steve rolling back over.

The room spins and he has to grip the doorframe. The wood whines under his grip and Bucky sucks in a sharp breath through gritted teeth, his head ringing.

“Just leave me alone,” he begs to himself, spitting the words out like rocks from his mouth.

The screams echo off the tile in the bathroom and Bucky’s starting to lose the ability to see straight. He trips out of his clothes and sits in the excessively large shower, freezing water pounding his back. The water bounces off the metal of his shoulder and arm and the sound is deafening but it’s better than what has been playing in his head since he woke up.

He concentrates on the chip in the tile on the floor of the shower for what feels like an eternity, until the door slams open. A pair of hands drags him out of the shower, Bucky’s teeth chattering in sync with his shaking body.

“Jesus, Bucky, what the hell?!”

He can barely hear Steve over the splitting headache the skeletons in his closet are carving into his skull, but he holds on tight to Steve’s thick arms. His vision spins and every word he’s ever spoken is suddenly forgotten.

“Buck, you’ve been in here for almost an hour. What the hell is going on with you?” Steve asks, blue eyes so worried that it makes him sick.

They’ve been spinning around each other for days, like two cars on a race track just waiting to crash. He’s been trying to change, trying to turn back the clock, be the man Steve seems to think he can be, but Bucky doesn’t know if he still exists anymore. Or, if he does, he’s damaged like a waterlogged book or a scratched record, still there but unplayable.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” he drones, voice cracking in the middle. Cold like dry ice, burning everything it touches. Steve looks at him, troubled and unconvinced, but Bucky has to tell him it’s not a lie if it will be true eventually. Someday he won’t be the reason Steve stays up at night, watching him pretend to sleep and refusing to say anything even though he knows what Bucky’s doing. Someday he won’t be such a liability.

Steve sighs and hands him a towel, pushing the wet hair back off his face. “If you say so, Buck.”

And there they go, drifting apart back into their own orbits.

Bucky’s hair is still dripping as he wanders out of the bathroom, dropping into one the dining chairs. The usual full breakfast is spread across the table, Steve loading the dishes into the dishwasher. “Remember when we had to do this ourselves?” the younger man asks quietly, dishes clinking as he sets them in the racks. “Whenever you would stay at my apartment, you would always offer to do the dishes. I think that’s why Ma always kept you around.”

Through the howling, all Bucky can think about is Sarah Rogers’s long freckled face, strawberry blond hair curling around her high cheekbones as she looked at him graciously. _“Remember, James, no fights tonight. Steve has already had a rough week with his asthma.”_

And he had put a hand on her shoulder, smiling down at the petite woman, saying, _“I promise, Ms. Sarah. I’ll keep an eye on him.”_

Look at them now.

Bucky picks at his breakfast, and can feel Steve anxiously watching him from the kitchen. There’s no explanation for any of this, but all he wants is for it to end.

His hand begins to shake by the time he manages to swallow a couple slices of bacon and a protein bar and Bucky is starting to this this is the new normal. He had been running from dead bodies for over 50 years and they’ve finally tracked him down.

“Are you _sure_ you’re okay?” Steve asks over the noise in Bucky’s head. “Don’t forget, we have the New Year’s Eve party tonight and I really want you to try and come with me.” Bucky’s chest aches at the small smile that pulls at the other man’s softly flushed lips. “We can even call it a date.”

He’s positive his teeth are going to crack when he tries to smile at Steve, a knife through the back of his neck. Bucky nods, his metal fingers digging into his skull just behind his left ear, and says, “It’s a date then.”

Bucky throws up everything in his stomach the moment Steve leaves the apartment.

The entire day goes by in a blur. All Bucky can do is sit in the wingback chair, body far too stiff, body far too upright, and watch the world spin around him. He feels like he’s drowning again, the screaming has wormed its way into his brain and his blood spread it like a wildfire. It wraps itself around his neck and mouth like the mask Hydra had silenced him with, keeping him compliant as it tortures him.

“Buck, you ready?” Steve asks, shaking him out of the well he had been building around him.

Bucky looks up at the blond and can almost feel his heart stop. The light grey suit brings out the blue in Steve’s eyes and he’s never seen him look better.

“Yeah, I just... need to get dressed,” he grits out, ducking into the bedroom and ducking away from Steve’s concern.

His heart stops again when he sees the blazer laid across the foot of the bed. He runs his hand over the soft navy velvet jacket, fingers sinking into the fabric. He knows Steve had made a conscious effort to put him in the softest clothes he could find, so different from the tight leather Hydra had strapped him into. His hands shake as he dresses himself, buttoning the white shirt and black pants. He slides the blazer on and fastens the single silver button.

The screams grow louder at his single moment of peace and Bucky bites the heel of his hand to muffle the sob that tries to climb out. He’s not sure how much longer he can do this.

Steve laces their fingers together in the hallway and doesn’t let go.

The party is already raging by the time the elevator doors open. The added noise turns the clatter in Bucky’s head to an outright roar. He squeezes Steve’s hand tighter as the crowd closes in around them. The entire party is nearly silent compared to the horrors ripping him apart right now. But, there’s Steve, his hair glowing like a halo and he’s the only thing Bucky can focus on.

Steve’s mouth opens slightly and his words come out slowly, dripping like molasses. “ _You’re... doing... great..._ ”

A hand claps down on his shoulder and Bucky almost jumps out of his skin. He turns to see Sam laughing with Steve. The room spins again and all Bucky can taste is hot copper blood in his mouth.

A camera flashes and he jumps, blinking wildly. He turns to run but there’s Steve, hand still intertwined with his and pulling him to the dance floor.

His mom taught him how to dance when he was eight years old and Steve couldn’t keep beat to save his life, but now Bucky feels like the roles are reversed. He stumbles over his own feet as Steve tries to keep them turning with the song. Bucky can’t hear it anyway but he thinks it must be a slow song with the way the other couples are moving.

Steve’s eyes are dark and intent as he whispers something, unintelligible over the screaming. Bucky’s hands drop from the younger man’s shoulders and his body seems to go on autopilot as he tears through the party, shoving people aside.

The door to the stairwell slams open and he gasps for air, digging at his skull. Bucky’s chest bursts as he screams, his own adding to the burning noise in his head. He tumbles up, up, up the stairs, searching for any kind of escape. He finally finds it in a service door at the very top of the flight.

The fireworks haven’t started but the air is ice cold as he rips the blazer off, his body absolutely burning.

The wind whips Bucky’s hair across his face, stinging his skin. The city lights illuminate his skin, casting a soft glow on everything around him. His legs feel numb as he steps up on the ledge. Bucky watches the city swarm into a giant party in front of him, unable to look down.

He closes his eyes and clenches his jaw but the screaming still won’t _stop_.

The service door slams open loud enough to make him jump and almost lose his balance. He looks numbly back at Steve standing in the doorway, blue eyes glowing with fear. His eardrums pound as Steve shouts, “Bucky, stop!” The younger man gives him a wide berth as he circles closer. “ _Please_ , just come back down.”

Bucky looks at him desperately and says, “I can’t stop the screaming. It never _stops_.”

He hinges his jaw, the pain radiating from his ears down into his face and neck. Steve inches closer and Bucky takes a step farther away from him, down the ledge. “Please don’t do this,” Steve begs quietly, holding out his hands carefully.

Covering his ringing ears with the heels of his hands, Bucky hunches over, screaming into the night. “It never fucking _stops_ ,” he howls, voice cracking.

Even over the screaming, Bucky can hear Steve’s panicked breathing.

The leather of Steve’s soles squeak quietly as he inches closer. “Bucky, it’s okay, there are things that can help you. Therapists... medicine...”

“You want to drug me like the CIA did?” Bucky spits hysterically. “Like _Hydra_ did? Make me so numb that I can’t even remember my own name and then turn me into a monster?” His voice is at a fevered pitch and his toes hang over the edge. “I didn’t _ask_ for this! I just wanted to go _home_ ,” he cries, doubled over.

Steve takes the moment to try and close the distance between them. When Bucky stands back up, there’s less than a yard between himself and the other man. “Please. I’m not saying goodbye again.”

The screaming in his head builds to a cacophony as he turns to Steve, catatonic. “I’m sorry.”

And it stops the moment he steps off the edge.

For a moment, Bucky relishes in the still silence and the rush of cold air engulfing his body. The weightlessness he forgot could exist. The complete peace.

But it last only a moment before he’s jerked back into reality as he slams against the metal building, dangling by his left arm. Steve hangs halfway over the ledge, fingers wrapped tightly around Bucky’s metal wrist. He braces himself with his other hand on the ledge, terrified face looking down on the older man. “Please,” Steve pleads, muscles straining to keep a hold of Bucky. “Please don’t do this.”

Bucky looks up and watches the dread eat away at Steve’s face. Watches the desperate panic heave his chest as he stares down from the top of the building. “Let me go, Steve,” he calls, trying to twist his wrist out of the blond’s grip as the horror in his head builds again. “Just let me go.”

“ _No!_ ” Steve shouts, blinking back tears. “No! I’m _not_ going to let you fall. Not again.”

Bucky swings his other arm up and tries to pry Steve’s fingers off his wrist, tries to slip out of his grip. He lets out frustrated yell when Steve drops his other hand over and wraps it tight around Bucky’s skin. “Let me _go_ , Steve.”

Steve’s head drops, forehead resting on the metal ledge, and Bucky can hear him muffle a sharp sob. He can hear the shaky inhale and the grief stricken determination is clear on Steve’s face as he looks down at the older man. “I can’t watch this happen again. I wasn’t fast enough or strong enough to save you in Austria,” he says, voice wavering, “but I’m not going to watch this happen again.”

He plants his feet on the wall and pulls a fighting Bucky up over the edge, struggling to get him back on the roof. Bucky’s shoulder aches as he scrambles back to the wall. Steve grabs him around the waist and throws him ten feet back from his escape. He rolls against the cold metal, looking up at Steve from his knees. “Just let me die, please. I’m so tired.”

Steve crosses the distance and drops to his knees in front of him. His hands feel ice cold as he cups Bucky’s cheeks with them. The yellow glow of the city illuminates the two tracks Steve’s tears have dug into his skin. “I’m not letting you go again. I’m not strong enough to lose you.”

Bucky’s voice is far past the edge of dead as he laments, “But I’m not even _here_.”

Steve’s arms slip under his armpits as the blond clings to him tightly, burying his face in Bucky’s neck. Maybe Steve needed him more than either of them wanted to admit.

“I can’t lose you again. I can’t lose you again,” Steve echoes over and over again, repeating the words like a broken record. Bucky somehow manages to pull his arms up and wrap them around the back of the younger man’s neck, easing warily into the embrace.

The fireworks begin, showering them in red, blue, and silver. The boom rattled his bones and takes them back to the battlefields.

And the screaming in Bucky’s head slows to a whisper.

~~~

_5... 4... 3... 2... 1..._

_Happy New Year!_

Steve kisses Bucky hesitantly at first. Like he’s scared Bucky is going to crack like a porcelain doll under his touch. Like Bucky is going to send shards into his mouth. But as the fireworks rumble above them, he kisses the older man like maybe he’s the one that’s going to break.

Bucky’s face is so exhausted and worn and his hands can’t seem to wipe it away, no matter how many times Steve runs his fingers over the other man’s face. “I need you here with me,” he breathes into Bucky’s mouth, into Bucky’s soul, anything to get him to believe he isn’t just a waste of space.

The brunet just stares at him through heavy eyes, a bruise starting to appear on the curve of his left cheek. It reminds Steve so much of the bruising from the Halo prototype in Azzano that it makes him sick.

And it’s all his fault.

He pulls them both to their feet, murmuring, “Do you want to go back to the party or go back downstairs? It’s probably started to die down.” Another firework goes off, bathing both of them in gold.

Bucky’s hands slide into the pockets of his slacks as he says numbly, “Sorry I ruined our dance.”

“At least you’re still here to finish it.”

And so they finish it.

The party has slowed significantly, so Steve slips the DJ ten dollars to play “Cheek to Cheek” and is grateful that Tony had closed the party to press as he and Bucky dance slowly, no space between them. Everyone else at the party is too drunk, too caught up in the celebration to notice them, so they revel in their privacy.

Bucky’s hands and cheeks are still cold from the hours they had just spent out on the icy air, but it begins to warm in his hand. They sway softly to the music and Steve wraps his hand tighter around the small of Bucky’s back, the other man’s hand closing in on his shoulder. He sometimes lays awake at night, wondering if he had ever done the right thing, if he was even doing the right thing now, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

This time he kisses Bucky carefully, quietly, their heads ducked together in the corner of the dance floor.

A waiter drops a tray and swears under his breath, shoving his hand in his pocket as he picks up the hors d’oeuvres off the floor. Steve watches the man quickly duck out the door, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

There’s a uneasy feeling he can’t seem to shake.

Steve falls into a restless sleep that night, arm curled tight around Bucky.

He wakes to pounding on the door. Bucky jerks awake, still on edge from last night, but Steve just puts a careful hand on his knee, climbing out of bed. He pulls on the pair of dress pants from the party and pads quietly through his living room. Scratching the itch on his abdomen, he unlocks the door to find Sam breathing heavily in front of him.

“Cap, did you read the news yet?” Sam asks, completely out of breath.

The uneasy feeling in his stomach grows as Sam shoves a newspaper in his hands. There, on the front page, is a blown up photo of him tenderly kissing Bucky, their quiet intimate moment splashed across the paper for the entire world to see. Above is the headline, “ _Captain Queer: Captain America caught kissing another man._ ”

Steve can feel his face flush a dark shade of crimson as he stares down at the headline. “Jesus,” he mumbles, “I’m surprised they didn’t just put ‘ _Captain Faggot_ ’ and get it over with.”

“Steve... why didn’t you just tell us about you and Barnes?” Sam asks quietly. “I thought we were _friends_.”

He can barely hear anything over the blood rushing in his ears. “Some old habits die hard. Nobody ‘came out’ in the 40’s. There was a kid in our school that ended up thrown off an 8th floor fire escape because a couple guys saw him kissing another boy. So you push that part of yourself down, pretend it doesn’t exist,” he says, crumpling the newspaper in his hands and tossing it on the floor. “You get really good at it with enough practice.”

Sam sighs and rubs the back of his neck, saying, “Stark is trying to do some damage control and told me to have you go up as soon as you can. It’s everywhere already.”

Steve scrubs a hand across his face and sigh, muttering, “Fine, just let me get a shirt on.”

He throws on his shirt from last night and buttons it on the way to the elevator. The doors close and the elevator rises before he even realizes he forgot his shoes.

Tony and Pepper are already busy on their phones when they get up to the common room, their voices overlapping as they try and sort things out as Natasha frantically types on her laptop. “No, there is no comment from Steve Rogers and a lawyer will be contacting you immediately,” Tony says before hanging up and turning his phone off. “What the _hell_ is this, Cap?” he asks, holding the paper up. “You gotta let me in on shit like this so this exact thing doesn’t happen.”

“I should be asking you!” he growls, grabbing the paper from the billionaire. “Pretty sure it was one of the waiters last night that took this!”

The shorter man holds his hands up in defense. “Hey, I’m just as pissed off as you are. But we can handle this. We have more than enough people to help you deny the story, say it’s photoshopped-”

“I’m not going to deny it, Tony, I-”

“I have enough connections that I can bury it, have the journalist fired,” Tony carries on, ignoring his protests. “I’ve got a million dollar retainer for this exact reason, we can sue the newspaper into the ground-”

“Tony, _stop_!” Steve shouts, loud enough to make everyone freeze. “I’m not going to hide this. I’m not going to pretend this isn’t who I am because I’m not _ashamed_ of this!”

Everyone stares at him with wide eyes and Steve still hasn’t gotten used to this.

“I have loved Bucky for longer than any of you can even _imagine_. And I loved Peggy. And then Bucky came back and I’m not going to _apologize_ for wanting to be with him,” he says, heart pounding in his chest. “I need him just as much as he needs me. Nobody in this room has to hide who they love and I don’t understand why _I_ have to be the exception.”

Tony nods understandingly and looks up the stairs at Pepper. She sighs and says, “Okay then, I guess I’ll call Time magazine.”

Sam puts a hand on his shoulder as Steve says dejectedly, “I should have had the chance to do this when I wanted, how I wanted, _if_ I even wanted to do it. I hate that it was taken away from me.”

“Sometimes we don’t get that choice, Cap,” the other man says. “Sometimes we have to roll with the punches.”

He nods and sighs quietly. “I should go check on Bucky. Let him know what happened.”

The moment the elevator doors close, he lets out the angry yell that has been bubbling up inside of him from the moment Sam handed him the paper. He punches the wall, leaving a three inch deep dent in the metal. His hand aches but not as badly as his chest.

It aches even more when he opens the door to his suite.

Bucky sits on the floor, staring at the smoothed our newspaper. His mouth is pressed into a thin line, eyes rimmed with red. Steve has to close his eyes, take a deep breath, and try and compose himself as much as he can before he can sink to the floor next to the other man. “You saw,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry this happened. It’s not your fault; I hope you know that.”

Bucky turns to him and asks quietly, “You’re not mad at me?”

“Why would I be mad at you?”

The older man shrugs numbly. “Not mad, I don’t know. Ashamed. Ashamed for kissing me, for being seen with me, especially after what I did.”

His eyes burn with salt as he blinks, shoving the paper away as he kisses Bucky deeply, waywardly. His hands on the side of the other man’s worn face, he vows, “I could never been ashamed of you. Never in my entire _life_ could I look at you and be ashamed of you, Bucky. You are everything.”

And Bucky looks at him, guilt gone from his eyes for the first time in longer than Steve can remember.

“Pepper is calling a magazine to get my side of the story out. I’m sure it’s going to be a whole big thing,” he says, lacing their fingers together. “I want you to be there with me. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to, but I want everyone to see you the way I see you. Not as James, not as the Winter Soldier, but just as Bucky. _My_ Bucky.”

“Okay,” the other man says, fingers relaxing. “I’ll do it.”

The photographers and journalist come within the next two hours and take more photos than Steve can count. They’re all so fluid, so natural, so soft. He stands behind the camera and watches the screen illuminate Bucky curled up on his leather couch, hands tucked in the sleeves of the sweater he had gotten for Hanukkah, repentant eyes keeping his gaze.

And Steve knows there’s one picture that he’s dying to see. Bucky’s long legs were propped up on the coffee table, with Steve stretched across the couch with his head in the older man’s lap. The photographer had told him almost ten times to look at the camera before she had given up and had shot them as they were, sharing that barely there, knowing smile that they could never pull away from.

They do a couple shots of him standing solo under pale pink and blue lights, creating a soft lavender down the bridge of his nose and throat. His shield guards his racing heart has Steve holds it close to his body, the metal and leather cool against his thin white T-shirt.

After the photo shoot, they curl up on the couch, Bucky’s chin tucked back behind his shoulder, the older man watching the reporter sit across from them. She pulls out her recorder and her notepad, scribbling a couple lines before she looks up at them with a smile. “Hannah Kilgore, Time Magazine. Thanks for reaching out to us, Captain Rogers.”

“Please, it’s just Steve.”

“So, Steve, how long have you two known each other? The Smithsonian exhibit says you two were friends on the schoolyard before the war,” she says.

“I was 9, and Bucky was a year older. I was trying to get my leg braces back back from some bullies and he stepped in to help. He hasn’t tried to leave me since,” he says, the white lie slipping out of his mouth unintentionally. Nobody needed to know about the two suicide attempts that had almost separated them, nobody needed to know the heartbreak.

“And when did you realize you were attracted to men?” Steve shrugs, the short scruff on Bucky’s face scratching against his T-shirt. “Ummm, I think I was about sixteen? I saw Clark Gable in ‘It Happened One Night’ and it just hit me like a ton of bricks,” Steve says, thinking back to him and Bucky in the back of the theater, his heart racing as it all sunk in.

“Did your mom know?” Hannah asks as she scribbles furiously. “Did James know?”

He shakes his head, muttering, “I’d like to think my ma knew, but, if she did, she never told me. And Bucky didn’t know until a couple weeks before Christmas. We had just been circling each other for years without telling each other. It definitely has felt like a long time coming.” Steve can feel Bucky smile against his back. Their homecoming had been less like a rain and more like a sea, water coming up so fast it had terrified them both.

“But during the war, there were reports that you were romantically linked to Agent Peggy Carter, were you not?” the reporter asks. “Was that an exaggerated story or did your sexuality change as you got older?”

“It didn’t change, I don’t understand-”

“Well, you said you were attracted to men when you were younger, and then if you were in a relationship with Peggy Carter, did your sexuality fluctuate through the years or were you just confused?”

“It didn’t fluctuate, I’m not confused,” he says, brow furrowing. “This is not an either-or situation. I care very deeply about both Peggy and Bucky and I don’t think I should have to choose between them. I don’t know what the world is going to label me but I’ve loved both men and women and I’m still me.”

Hannah smiles and says, “Perfect segue to my next question. There are critics out there who say everything the world knew about Captain America is going to change and that it’s inappropriate to share such private information. What are your thoughts on that?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly want to be outed like this, but we should all get the chance to be our true selves, to not have to hide. Diversity shows us where our experiences overlap. It teaches us to recognize commonality before differences. It breeds empathy. It combats fear. It makes us better. I’m still the same kid from Brooklyn, but now everyone just knows a little more about me. I’ve been taking some time off from the Avengers since Bucky came home and the end of S.H.I.E.L.D. so we can get our lives back together, but I’ll be back.”

The reporter turns slightly toward Bucky. “James, are you willing to answer a couple questions?”

Steve leans back as Bucky shifts, visibly uncomfortable. “Depends in the questions,” he says.

“What has it been like, being back? The details around your return are unclear and the media was shocked when you were identified in the picture.”

Steve watches Bucky clench his jaw, try to keep his breathing even as he says, “I don’t think I can say anything about how I came back. I think it’s classified. But...” he pauses, ducking his head. “But it hasn’t been easy being back, and I’m just really glad to have Steve here. I couldn’t do it without him.”

The interview lasts another hour and Steve handles all of the questions. Bucky listens quietly, tucked back in the corner of the couch as he goes on and on and it feels like he’s exhaling fully for the first time in his life.

No more Captain America, no more hiding, just Steve.

~~~

“Can we start calling you ‘ _Captain Handsome_ ’ now?” Clint asks after Pepper drops the stack of magazines on the coffee table. Everyone had grabbed one and was busy flipping through the pages to get to Steve’s feature.

The cover was a surprise after waiting almost two weeks for the issue to put its first printing out, but it still catches his breath. There he was, on the cover of Time, a white star behind his head like a halo, the pale colors illuminating him from below as he stared into the camera, face strong and resilient. And there, across his chest: _‘Steve Rogers steps into the light.’_

“ _Steve_ ,” Pepper says warmly, “you guys look so _happy_. This is an amazing article.”

“Ugh, _barf_ ,” Natasha says with a smirk as she whacks his stomach with the magazine. “Too much of a love fest over here for me.”

Sam wraps a arm around her shoulders, pulling her in tight. “What, my malishka, you don’t want in on this?” he jokes, holding her tighter as she feigns a struggle. “You totally seem like the type of woman to plaster her face on the cover of the country’s biggest magazine.”

Natasha scoffs and finally worms her way out of Sam’s arms. “I’ll leave that up to you boys.”

“Are you guys okay if I head back downstairs?” Steve asks quietly, gripping the magazine tightly in his hand. “Figured Bucky should get a chance to see these.”

“Where is Barnes anyway?” Clint asks. “He still owes me $30 from last poker night.”

He thinks back to Bucky hanging off the edge of the building, his hands wrapped around the older man’s wrists, and it still sends shivers through his body. “Things haven’t been great the last couple weeks, so he’s trying to take it easy,” Steve says, trying to be as convincing as possible. Nat gives him a look but that woman could see through anything.

“Tell him to get better soon. Tell him Barton and Romanoff are gonna kick your asses again at Pictionary next game night, so he better get ready,” Clint says, high-fiving Natasha with a devious grin.

“I’m just glad Cap’s got a new partner so I can stop getting whooped by you two,” Sam says, crossing his arms.

Steve ducks out right as Clint starts arguing that maybe Sam should just stop sucking at Pictionary if he wanted to win a game for once in his life. In the elevator, he flips the pages back open to his favorite picture of Bucky. A half page side-profile portrait, the brunet’s head tipped back toward the heavens, all off his posthumous war medals superimposed behind him. The caption had read, “ _Missing WWII hero, James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, comes home after 70 years,_ ” but nobody other than Steve got to know the whole story.

Bucky looks up from his notebook when he comes through the door. “How’d it go?” the older man asks, closing the book and setting it aside. “Pictures look nice?”

Steve hands the magazine over with a soft smile, saying, “Find out for yourself.”

He watches Bucky flip through the pages, reading through the article. “I can’t believe you told them about getting my hand me downs,” Bucky says, laughing a little. “You used to wear newspapers in your shoes too, but I’m the only one that gets to know that.” He flips to the picture of Steve’s head in his lap and pauses, fingers lingering over their faces. “I look different. I look... happy...”

Sitting down across from Bucky, he asks, “Are you?”

The older man looks at him and Steve has to remind himself to breathe. The corners of Bucky’s mouth twitch upward for the first time since the suicide attempt two weeks ago as he says, “I think so. I’m just trying to remember what it feels like again.”

“You’ll get there eventually,” he reassures, nudging Bucky’s ankle with his foot. “We both will.”

Bucky holds up the photo of himself with his medals. “This is my favorite one,” he says, almost proudly. “I feel like everyone gets to see me how you see me, now.”

Steve slips off the couch and sinks to his knees in between Bucky’s knees, pulling the magazine out of the brunet’s hand. “If everyone got to see you how I get to see you, it wouldn’t be fit to print,” he hums, hands sliding up Bucky’s thighs. “That part I want to keep just for myself.”

Bucky’s eyes slip closed and he lets out a shaky breath when Steve presses his lips to the inside of his wrist. “Tell me you love me,” he whispers.

“I love you,” Steve breathes, the older man’s fingers spreading across his face, fingerprints brushing his eyelashes. “I love you so much I don’t know what to do with myself. I want to spread you across me and just let you sink in. Become a part of me, like you always were.”

He can feel the buzz of restlessness under Bucky’s skin, under his lips, under his mouth.

“Tell me you love me,” Bucky exhales again as Steve’s hands begin to fumble with the button on his jeans. He tugs the older man’s pants down over his hips, kissing the inside of Bucky’s thighs. “Tell me you love me, Steve...”

There’s no way he can put into words, the entirety of his love, but Steve can show it. He unwraps Bucky carefully, like he’s extracting a porcelain heart from tissue paper. Peels back the layers and spreads his fingers underneath skin like he can’t get enough. He inhales the anxiety from the brunet, just trying to carry the weight for him, just trying to bridge the gap between their bodies.

Steve plans on keeping the memory of Bucky’s skin against the dark leather of his couch in his mind forever.

He rests his forehead on Bucky’s knee as the older man comes down, letting out hard and heavy breaths like he’s been running a marathon. Both of them are dripping with sweat and adrenaline and Steve has to catch his breath, gripping Bucky’s calf as it stretches back down to the floor.

“I _love_ you,” Bucky hums above him, head tipped back on the couch. Steve sits back on the floor, stretching his knees out straight for what feels like the first time in hours. Bucky nudges him with his foot and he lets out a quiet laugh. “You okay there, Rogers?”

He nods, wiping his face with the neck of his T-shirt as he says, “Yeah. You’re just a lot to keep up with.”

The brunet makes an indignant noise and kicks at him again, harder this time, and Steve just catches his ankle, keeping him where he wants him. “Sometimes I forget how much of an asshole you are,” Bucky says and he can almost hear the smirk on the older man’s face. “Snarky little bastard since the day you were born, weren’t you?”

“You didn’t seem to mind it when we were kids,” he laughs, pressing a kiss to the ankle captured in his hand.

“You think I liked cleaning up your messes when you got in a mood to fight any and everyone in Brooklyn? You think I liked hauling your dumb ass out of alleys and parking lots and empty lots? I did it because I loved you, punk.”

Steve smiles and crawls back up on the couch, kicking at Bucky’s bare hips with his heel as he says, “Hey, I never started fights, I just finished them.”

“ _I_ finished them,” the brunet says, whacking him across the chest, eyes still closed. “You just put up a valiant effort.”

Steve grins and doesn’t argue back. He’s too busy watching the way Bucky’s mouth curl up into a slow smile. As much as they’d never admit it out loud, too afraid to jinx it, this was the first time Bucky had seemed like himself since before either of them could remember. Like right before the mission in Austria, the two of them joking together quietly.

It was normal for once.

“Barton says he hopes you feel better soon, by the way,” he mutters, stretching his long legs out on the coffee table. “Says he’s going to wipe the floor in Pictionary again tomorrow night. I think I’ve gotten worse now that you’re on my team.”

Bucky rolls his head and cracks an eye open as he says, “You put too much detail in, not my fault.”

“Oh, says the man who spent the entire turn shading one drawing when I still couldn’t get it.”

The brunet doesn’t argue with that fact, just drops his hand from his lap, waiting for Steve to take it carefully.

They both close their eyes, just soaking in the quiet silence.

After a couple minutes, he hears Bucky ask quietly, voice barely audible, “Did you really want to marry me? When you asked me over Hanukkah?”

Steve doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t shift his body in fear of scaring the other man out of the tender moment, but just tightens his grip on Bucky’s hand, feeling the familiar hum of anxiety building in the brunet’s fingertips. “I did. I still do. That box is still rattling around in my sock drawer.”

“Did you ever thinking about wanting to marry Peggy?”

Bucky’s hand tightens in his and Steve lifts them to press his lips to the back of Bucky’s palm. “I don’t know. I did love her, I’m not going to pretend I didn’t,” he says, mentally kicking himself when the slow smile uncurls at the corners at the older man’s mouth. “But if things were different. If we had grown up in a time when neither of us had to hide everything from each other, if I could’ve married you back in 1940, I would have in a heartbeat.”

“Do you think... if we had grown up now... that my parents would’ve loved me more? Not be as ashamed of me?” Bucky asks with a somber sigh. “It was all I fucking wanted.”

“I think if your mom would have insisted on a traditional Jewish ceremony,” Steve says, breathing a little easier when he hears the other man let out a short laugh. “Sam would have to be my best man, of course. Then probably Tony and Nat.”

“I think Clint would kill me if I didn’t ask him,” Bucky says, smile returning tentatively, and Steve watches him from the other side of the couch. He wonders if the older man is planning their wedding in his head, eyes still closed, chest rising and falling slow and steady. “I’d probably ask Pepper and Bruce, just to round out it evenly. They’ve been helping me out when you’re busy being Captain America.”

Steve runs his free hand up through his dark hair, still damp from sweat. “You could wear navy blue. Put your hair up maybe.”

“I think I could wear a T-shirt and cargo shorts and you would still marry me.”

He wants to pull Bucky back into in a kiss and write, ‘ _More than you know_ ,’ into his skin, into his soul, but he settles with breathing, “It could be just you and me in some shitty hotel and I would still marry you.”

A salty tear escapes the corner of the brunet’s eye, slipping silently back into his hairline as Bucky says, “You’re too good for me.”

Steve leans over to place a careful kiss to the damp spot on his temple and murmurs, “No, Buck, I’m just right for you. Just like you’re just right for me. Always have been. And you can’t tell me any different.”

“Stubborn punk.”

~~~

“I want this off my body...”

Tony drops his ratchet, heart pounding, as Bucky watches him from the doorway. “ _Jesus_ , Barnes. You and Rogers need to learn how to knock,” he says, picking up his tools. “They must have had personal space in the 40’s, but I may be wrong.” He flops down in a nearby chair. “Okay Manchurian Candidate, what do you want?”

“I want this off my body,” Bucky repeats, leaning against a table.

“Specifics, Barnes. What do you want off?”

He unzips his sweatshirt, letting the shoulder fall. The red star shines in the bright light of Tony’s workshop. He swallows thickly, frowning softly when he catches a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye. “Please,” he asks. “I hate it so much.”

Tony’s smirk fades as he nods understandingly. “Let me get a couple tools.”

It takes almost half an hour of grinding and polishing but the red star is finally gone. Bucky catches his reflection in the glass window and it’s almost a little bittersweet. He’ll never be fully whole again but it’s a start. Hydra had no control over him anymore.

“Thanks,” he mutters, pulling his sweatshirt back on.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Tony says. “People start finding out I’m dishing out favors, they’ll think I’m going soft.” He tosses the polisher back on the table. “But, I will admit, you look better without it.”

Bucky shoves his hands in his pockets and starts to walk out of the workshop but stops, feet on the threshold. He looks back at Tony, muttering quietly, “I’m sorry about your parents...” Tony freezes, body tensing. “Steve told me about the crash. I knew Howard during the war.”

Tony scoffs. “You too? Guess he was too busy going on about the infallible Captain America to mention his sidekick.”

When the younger Stark glances back at him, though, there’s something so familiar in his face, like something he’s seen before.

Bucky’s head screams as memories flash back. His finger on the trigger of a gun. There was a car crash. Flames. His mind howling with hesitation. A trunk opening. _“Sergeant Barnes?”_ His fist cracking against a skull. His hand wrapped around a throat. _“Howard!”_

“Tony?” The other man’s name falls out of his mouth as Bucky realizes what he’s done. There were no such things as accidents in their world.

“ _Barnes_ ,” Tony says, mockingly, before he sees the other man standing in the doorway, eyes red.

“I think I killed your parents...”

Tony turns around slowly, looking at Bucky, confused. “What did you say?” he growls, voice turning dark. “What did you say?” Tony repeats, raising his voice as he closes the space between them, cornering the other man against the entryway. Bucky doesn’t even try and fight back as Tony’s hand covers in armor and wraps around his throat. “What did you say, Barnes.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Bucky wheezes, struggling for air. “I didn’t want to. I’m sorry, Tony.”

There’s a part of his mind that screams to fight back, to kill Tony, to protect himself, but he pushes it down. He wasn’t a weapon anymore. He wasn’t a weapon, even in a fight for self preservation.

He can see the furious tears welling in Tony’s brown eyes. “I don’t care, you killed my mom,” he snarls, grip tightening around his throat. “Do you even _remember_ them?”

Bucky’s vision fades around the edges and his head feels light as the metal around his throat contracts. His lungs scream and all he can hear is a faint hum. His voice is barely audible as he whispers, “I remember them _all_.”

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now.”

“I can’t.”

He drops to the floor, coughing and holding his throat. Tony looms over him, blaster pointed square between his eyes. “You have one minute to convince me not to turn you into a roasted marshmallow. Go.”

Bucky swallows down the taste of blood and looks at his shaking hands. “The first few years, I thought I could resist what Hydra did to me. After losing count of the broken bones, losing count of how many times they burned me, watching them kill _children_ in front of me, having them...” His voice fails with a crack. “I thought if I fought long enough they would either kill me or let me go. But after twenty years of them taking me in and out of cryo just to hurt me and scramble my brain, I just gave up. I let them put a gun in my hand and did what I had to do to survive. Killed to make my life a little easier.”

“Nobody made you pull the trigger, Barnes.”

“If you’re asking for a good reason not to kill me,” Bucky says, looking up at Tony, “I don’t have one. You _should_ kill me. But if you’re going to do it, do it now, because I’ve been begging for death for 70 years.”

The blaster in Tony’s glove powers down. He crouches down, anger seeping out of his mouth as he spits, “No. I’m not going to give you the easy way out. I want you to suffer in the personal hell you live in.”

The doors to the workshop slam close with a bang. Bucky’s head drops into his hands, fingers fisting in his hair, and he screams, voice echoing.

He screams and screams until he loses his voice, hair coming out in thin clumps as he releases his hands. It’s been minutes, hours, Bucky’s not sure, but it’s clear nobody is coming to look for him. The sun starts to set before he can manage to peel himself off the floor and stumble into the elevator.

The doors ding open and Bucky steps out into the common room, only to find half a dozen pairs of eyes staring back at him.

“ _Bucky_.”

His head snaps toward Steve and they meet each other in seconds, Steve wrapping him in a tight hug. “I’m sorry,” Bucky rasps against his neck. “I’m so sorry.”

“Do you want to tell them all, or should _I_?” Tony calls out, arms crossing. “No? Okay. Barnes-”

Steve lets him go and argues, “Tony, stop. You know that wasn’t his fault. That wasn’t him.”

The rest of the group looks between the three men confusedly. Tony lets out a bitter huff and jabs his finger at Bucky. “Winter Soldier over there killed my parents. Remember how we all thought it was some freak accident? Nope. Just the person who I’ve been giving refuge to in my own fucking house,” he says, flinging a lamp against the wall.

Bucky flinches at the crash, body tensing. He can see Natasha and Bruce staring at him with wide eyes from across the room.

“You think he doesn’t feel like shit about what he’s done?” Steve says, stepping down towards Tony. “Look at him, Tony. _You_ know what it’s like being captured.”

“I didn’t kill innocent people, Rogers.”

“Bucky has been in Hydra’s hands longer than you’ve been alive, Tony. You have _no_ idea what they’ve done to him.” Steve shouts, getting dangerously close to the billionaire. “No god damn _idea_.”

“He _KILLED_ my parents,” Tony yells. He stops and scoffs resentfully. “You know what? I saw their autopsy reports and they never could explain the bruises around my mom’s neck. Thought they were from the seatbelt or the dashboard, but no. Just your friend.” His voice lowers to a deadly whisper as he hisses, eyes burning, “He broke her trachea, Steve. Strangled her with his bare hands. But that wasn’t him, right?”

“Nothing is going to bring your parents back, Tony.”

“You think I don’t know that? _He’s_ the one that took them from me!”

“He was a prisoner of war,” Steve growls. “For _seventy years_. Tony, that’s a lifetime.” He looks back at Bucky, looking lost by the elevator, and says, voice softening as he says, “He wouldn’t sleep, Tony. He didn’t eat unless I could convince him to. He still wakes up screaming half the time.” Steve looks back at the shorter man. “He’s already tried to kill himself twice.”

Tony’s jaw clenches as he pushes past Steve, snapping, “Yeah, well maybe third time’s the charm.”

He pushes past Bucky, sending him reeling, before disappearing in the elevator.

Steve rubs a thumb between his eyebrows, muttering, “What a fucking mess. Jesus.” Bucky carefully climbs down the steps and sits anxiously on one of the couches. Steve looks at him and asks, “Are you okay, Buck?” He nods but he’s not exactly sure that it’s the truth.

“I’m gonna go check on Tony,” Bruce mutters quietly before he ducks out of the group.

“You know, he’s got every reason to be mad, Cap,” Sam says as he leans against the arm of the couch. “Barnes _did_ -”

“Sam, _stop_.” Steve sighs and runs his fingers through his head. “You’re not helping.”

Natasha moves behind the couch and runs a hand over Bucky’s hair, smoothing the messy strands down. “I don’t think anything is going to help this, Rogers. I think this is just something that just needs to run its course. Tony will come back around eventually. I just wouldn’t expect him to come to game night for a while.”

Bucky zones out as the other three argue about the fate of their group. All he knows is that he’s the reason for all the infighting.

Maybe Steve should have left him with Hydra, should have left him and moved on with the life that he had built in his absence. Even when things are fine, he’s still just taking up space in Steve’s life instead of intertwining.

The memories of Hydra still flash through his head when Natasha squeezes his shoulder gently. He jumps when Steve slams his fist on the table, shouting something that Bucky can’t quite hear through the feeling of drowning. Through the feeling of Stark’s glove glowing in front of his eyes.

“I need to go,” he chokes out, crawling off the couch and his feet never seem to work when he needs them to. His knee cracks on a step as he grapples for the stair rail.

“Bucky, wait!”

He hears Natasha murmur, “Steve, just let him go. Let him breathe.”

The elevator doors close around him and Bucky just drops to the floor, trying to keep himself in his body. The silence is deafening but he wants to inject it like morphine, anything to numb the pain.

Anything to keep the quiet.

~~~

Steve comes up late, almost four in the morning, and Bucky has finally gotten his hands to stop shaking.

“You okay?” the younger man asks, soft voice thick with pent up rage.

He nods numbly and says detachedly, “Don’t worry, he didn’t touch me.”

Steve sits carefully on the couch and says, “That’s not what I asked. I asked if you were fucking _okay_ , Bucky.” The sharp edge in the other man’s voice makes Bucky flinch, and he can hear Steve sigh quietly. “I’m sorry,” he relents. “None of this was your fault. I shouldn’t get angry at you.”

“I murdered his parents...” Bucky whispers, and he can feel his voice begin to shake again. “And I didn’t even remember it. He should have killed me...”

“Bucky, you filled up almost sixteen notebooks of what Hydra did to you. What they _made_ you do. You don’t have to try and justify any of it,” Steve says uneasily. “Not to me, not to Tony, not to anyone.”

He leans into the blond’s touch when he touches Bucky’s arm apprehensively. “I just want to forget this. I’m so fucking tired,” he mutters, fingers digging anxiously into his thighs.

Steve places a warm kiss on his temple and Bucky’s head burns like a lit cigarette snuffed out against his skin. “Just get some sleep, okay? I gotta go talk to Bruce but I’ll be back in a little bit,” the younger man says gently, kissing him again. “We’ll get through this, I promise.”

Bucky sinks down into the couch, eyes slipping closed as the door locks behind Steve.

He wakes up violently, heart racing at the sound of locks whirring shut. Sitting up slowly, he stares down the shorter man standing across the room from him. Tony’s eyes are dark as pitch, his jaw set hard enough to crack teeth. “Get up,” the man growls darkly, approaching him slowly. “Get up, _now_.”

Bucky scrambles up as the first blast puts a hole in the leather, inches from his body. He tries to close himself in Steve’s bedroom, but slams into the bed, the door crashing off its hinges into him. He throws the door off, Bucky turns around the room but there’s nowhere else to go.

Another blast sends him face first into the wall, his head cracking against the cement. Warm blood seeps down into his eyes as he backs himself into the corner of the bedroom.

“You took everything from me,” Stark snarls, his glove aimed at Bucky’s head. “I thought about just letting it eat you alive but I don’t know if that’s going to be good enough anymore. I wanted to see you just as scared as they were when you killed them.”

The blood runs down his chin, staining Bucky’s T-shirt crimson as his vision swims.

“You’re going to tell me what they did to you,” Tony says through gritted teeth. “I want to know _exactly_ what they did to you that gives you an excuse for what you’ve done.”

Bucky’s skin turns to coals, face burning as he shakes his head desperately. “Please... Tony...”

“TELL ME!” The blaster glows brighter, whirring mechanically. “You _murdered_ my parents,” Tony growls. “I want to know every god damn thing they did to you.”

“P-Please don’t make me tell you,” he stutters, his mind already slipping into his memories. All Bucky wishes is that Steve was here, instead of trapped on the other side of the door. Steve, his rock, his constant. The only thing keeping him in his body.

Tony points the glove inches from Bucky’s face, square between his eyes. “ _Tell. Me._ ”

Everything holding him together snaps. “You want to know what they did to me, Stark? Want to know how they force fed me? Beat me until my lungs collapsed and then tossed me into a cell until the next day after the god damn serum fixed me? Broke all my fingers with clamps? Do you know how much force it takes to break a super soldier’s bones? Want to know how they threw me into the Halo until I couldn’t walk? Until I was drooling on the floor? Is that what you wanted to know?” Bucky demands brokenly, hands shaking their way into fists.

“I don’t care,” Tony says, firing a blast into the cement wall by Bucky’s head. The small cracks fall to the floor, echoing in the silence.

They can both hear faint banging and yelling on the other side of the door.

Bucky closes his eyes, tears creasing in the folds of his skin. “After a decade of me fighting back they realized they had to change tactics.” He looks up at Tony, choking out for the first time to anyone, “They would rape me. Tie me down and take whatever they wanted.” His voice wavers as his shoulders close in on themselves. “I would think about going home, coming back to Brooklyn and coming back to Steve. But then I started forgetting home. Forgetting Brooklyn. Forgetting Steve.

“But they woke me up just to remind me. Woke me up just to finally break me the only way they knew how.

“They injected me with something. Made my head scream and I couldn’t see straight. They strapped me down and I saw Steve. He was so real. He was... he was begging me for help. I tried to scream but I couldn’t open my mouth. A Hydra agent came in and poured something in his mouth.” A sharp breath cuts its way out of his lungs as he says, “I know now it wasn’t Steve but he looked just like him. And this boy was falling over trying to get me out so I could help him. Begging me to help him as blood was pouring out of his mouth. I thought I was watching Steve die right at my feet.

“Then they dragged his body out and threw me screaming back in cryo. What most people don’t know about cryo is that you still think about the last thing you see. I spent years just watching that boy bleed out on the floor. When they brought me back out, I spent two weeks in complete darkness, complete silence. I thought I was going to go crazy. All I could think about was Steve. Then they stuck me in the Halo and threw me back in, but I still just saw _him_.”

Bucky’s face feels numb as he whispers, “I thought I had lost him. I thought I had lost the only person I had ever loved. I didn’t fight back anymore.”

The glove powers down and Bucky loses all hope in a god that would give him a sweet, merciless death. Tony’s lip curls as he snarls, “I hope you live another 60 years with my mom’s face screaming down at you when you try and sleep. I hope you can’t get her out of your head until the day that body gives out on you.”

Stark’s dress shoes echo on the concrete floors as he turns to the doors. “J.A.R.V.I.S? Doors.”

The doors click open and Bucky can hear Tony and Steve arguing heatedly from he hallway. “Just leave him alone, Tony! All you’re doing is risking him having another episode, one he can’t get out of!” Steve shouts angrily. “I just got him back.”

The whine of the glove starts before there’s a blast and a thud, Steve falling to the floor. Bucky can hear the younger man groan but he can’t get his body to move from the corner he’s been backed into. The elevator doors whoosh far away and the doors to his enclosure open further as Steve stumbles in, arm wrapped around his stomach. Bucky can see the scorch marks on his white shirt, the blast having burned holes in the fabric.

“Bucky,” Steve coughs, “are you okay?” He kneels down next to him, hand still wrapped around his body, and touches his head wound worriedly.

Bucky shakes his head, reaching out gently for Steve. The younger man uncovers his abdomen and he can see the singed skin peeking through. “You’re hurt,” he says and he’s not sure when his voice started shaking.

The blond hisses when his fingers linger over the burns and he says, “I’m fine. But we need to leave now. We can’t stay here anymore. It’s not safe.”

He nods and whispers, “I understand.” This tower was the only home either of them had left at this point, but Bucky’s starting to think that they had started building a new one around each other.

He packs his notebooks, the gifts Steve got him during Hanukkah, and what few clothes and other personal items he has. It’s only enough to fill a duffle bag and a backpack, but Steve doesn’t have a lot to bring either. “I’ll send for everything else,” Steve says as they slip quietly out of the building and into a cab.

They spend the night in a seedy hotel but neither of them can sleep.

Bucky lays his head across Steve’s bandaged stomach, the younger man’s fingers carding absentmindedly through his long hair. “I’m thinking about cutting it,” he murmurs tiredly. Steve makes a small hum of approval, distant and distracted. Bucky leans into his touch and asks, “You okay?” He turns his head to watch the blond nod faintly and turn toward the wall. Bucky wraps his fingers around the man’s hand and presses his lips carefully to the other man’s palm. He can hear Steve’s breath catch when he murmurs, “I love you.”

“I love you too, Buck.” The sirens wail outside and the world spins around them but it stopped mattering at this point.

They rent a shitty fifth floor walk up studio in Brooklyn and they move the bare essentials because it’s just enough, the two of them together.

A bed, a couch, a single hot plate on the counter next to the small sink, and a fridge crammed into a 10x10 box. They sit out on the fire escape like they used to when they were teenagers and Bucky’s fingers itch for a cigarette. They eat takeout from the Jewish deli across the street and the brisket is nowhere close to as good as his mother’s. They dance quietly to the music from the turntable in the corner and he never wants this to end.

Steve kisses a trail down his abdomen and Bucky yields under his touch. Their food will be here any minute but he’s not about to complain. “ _Nobody_ is going to take you away from me,” Steve murmurs into the hair around his navel, voice dark and possessive. “You’re going to stay mine forever.”

His head tips back against the armrest and his hips arch into the other man’s chest as he murmurs, “I know. I know.”

Bucky’s still coming down, still shaking when Steve runs downstairs to get the food, lips still red and swollen. He stares at the cracking ceiling and thinks of a night when Steve will murmur against his neck, _“I’m done. I’m retiring.”_ Thinks of a night where their shoes will stay at the base of their bed, with no place to go. Nowhere to run to. Nowhere to run from.

He hopes that it comes soon, and not when they’re too old, too tired for it to matter.

~~~

Bucky wakes up early and pulls his pocket knife out from underneath his pillow. Old habits die hard.

The fluorescent light in the cramped bathroom hums whenever it turns on and Bucky throws a towel in the crack at the bottom the door so he doesn’t wake Steve. The light catches the silver blade when he flips it open and runs his thumb along the blade. It’s not particularly sharp but it’s sharp enough for the job at hand.

The first chunk of hair gives way easily, falling to the floor silently. He wishes he had scissors but he’ll make do with what he has.

By the time he’s done, Bucky has a pile of dark hair on the floor and what’s left on his head is just long enough to tuck behind his ears. It doesn’t look half bad if he didn’t look too closely, but he just hopes Steve doesn’t mind. He cleans up and showers, letting the lukewarm water run down his bare neck for the first time in longer than Bucky can remember. Maybe back in London was the last time.

He dries off with a towel and stares at his reflection in the mirror a little too long.

All of the scars have faded from the serum except the one connecting his shoulder with the metal underneath. The one between his ribs where Jim had dug out a bullet that winter in France. The one where Hydra had cut him from sternum to navel, just to play inside as he screamed.

He trails his fingers down over his chest, over the hard lines of his abdomen, and into the dip in his hipbones. His eyes flutter shut as his hand brushes over himself and he has to resist the urge to press his palm against the growing hardness. The more he thinks about it, the less he recognizes his body as something that was taken from him and more something that he’s fought to reclaim.

The door creaks when Bucky opens it again and he can see Steve stirring on the bed. His knees sink in as he crawls up onto the mattress, muttering, “Wake up, punk.”

The blond buries his face deeper in the pillow and groans, “Jerk.”

Bucky slides down under the blanket and wraps himself around Steve, warming his still damp skin against the other man’s. Steve groans again, worming away from him. “C’mere,” he laughs, grabbing the younger man around the waist. “Tell me my hair looks nice.”

He raises an eyebrow when Steve turns his head to face him. He runs a hand through Bucky’s shorter hair and says, “Let me guess, you did this yourself?”

“Is it that bad?”

“It looks great. It’s a good length on you,” Steve murmurs, playing with the ends of the strands. “We can pick up some scissors at the bodega today. Clean it up a bit. Make you look real pretty.” He kisses Bucky gently, thumb running over the thin skin behind his ear as their bodies fit together like they were almost made to.

The radiator kicks on with a hiss as he wraps his leg up around Steve’s hip, drawing him closer.

Steve fucks him hard and slow as the sun rises, streaming through the old lace curtains. One of the blond’s hands fists in Bucky’s shorter hair as the other covers his mouth, muffling Bucky’s moans as the Japanese couple next door bangs on the wall.

His fingers itch for a cigarette again when Steve looks across the bed from him, hair plastered to his sweaty forehead. “How long are we going to do this?” Bucky asks quietly, heart still racing beneath his sternum. “Are we just going to stay in bed, eat takeout, and fuck until we die?”

“I don’t know, that sounds like a pretty great life,” the younger man laughs.

“Would you kill me if I started smoking again?” he asks, kicking the blanket off his too hot body.

“They’ll kill you faster than I could. They apparently cause cancer.”

“ _What_?!” Bucky exclaims. “I bet the serum would counteract that. Considering you didn’t get it from all that radiation they put you through. I’ll pick up some tobacco and papers at the store in a bit. Do you want anything?”

“Just some M&Ms. Maybe some fruit and vegetables if you want to,” Steve says, burying his face back in the pillows. “We don’t have a lot of space.”

Bucky rolls out of bed and pulls a pair of underwear out of the suitcase and slips it over his hips before pulling his jeans on. He pulls his big blue sweater over yesterday’s T-shirt and kisses Steve’s cool shoulder. “I’ll be back soon.” The younger man hums in satisfaction and part of Bucky just wants to climb back in bed and stay forever like he had suggested earlier.

The bodega across the street is busy in the early morning coffee rush, so he just grabs some apples, some protein bars, some carrots, and Steve’s stupid M&Ms.

The tobacco bags smells so good, so familiar, that Bucky just wants to chain smoke all three, but knows Steve would kill him if he does. He hands the kid at the register $60 and wants to die at how much everything costs now. Part of him knows they don’t have to worry about money anymore, but the other part balks at the fact that each bag is fifteen fucking dollars.

The other man is fast asleep again when he comes back, so Bucky sits on the cold fire escape alone, rolling cigarettes into neat little stacks like he did back in the war.

He manages to smoke three cigarettes before Steve sticks his head out the window.

“Jesus, how many of those have you made?” the blond asks, crawling out the window next to him. “Remember you and Monty having that rolling contest back in Germany? How many did you end up making? Twenty? Thirty?”

Bucky wets the edge and smooths it over before twisting the end. “Sixty in five minutes,” he says with a grin. “Beat that British bastard _easily_. I’m a little rusty now, though.”

“How many have you made?”

“Fifty, not counting the ones I smoked already.” Steve gives him a look but knows better than to ask how many that was. “It made me feel a bit more normal,” Bucky admits, pulling out another paper. “Smoking out here like I used to do at your apartment before the war. I felt like me again, for the first time in who knows how long.”

“Maybe I should try one of those.” Bucky looks up at Steve, fingers paused in the bag of tobacco. The younger man’s gaze is far away, staring blankly out across the city. It’s a look he recognizes in himself but wasn’t expecting to see it in Steve.

“You okay?”

Steve shrugs unaffectedly, muttering, “I guess...” He sighs quietly and stretches his legs across the metal grate. “I just can’t shake the feeling something’s going to happen. It’s like I can feel it in my stomach every time I look at you. I keep having nightmares that you disappear before I can reach you and they feel so real.” Bucky watches the muscles in the other man’s shoulders tense as he turns away from him. “I’ve compartmentalized everything for so long that I thought I could do it again”

“You shouldn’t have to, Steve,” he murmurs, finishing his last cigarette. “The world doesn’t always have to be on your shoulders.”

Steve turns to him and furrows his eyebrows. “What are you saying?”

Bucky looks at him earnestly, knocking their knees together as he says, “Maybe this can be it. Maybe saving me is enough to earn your retirement. We’ll just stay in bed, eat takeout, and fuck until we die, like you wanted to. You can go back to just being a kid from Brooklyn again.”

“What if I don’t know how to be that? What if I don’t know how to live without a war?” the blond asks faintly. “What if I don’t know how to be _me_ anymore?”

“Well, we’ve just been piecing me back together all this time,” he says gently. “Isn’t it time you got a chance to do the same?” Bucky gathers all his cigarettes and stores them away for later as he watches Steve from the corner of his eye. “Remember when everything was falling apart? And you said, ‘We can try and hold on to those little moments of happiness, can’t we?’ They shouldn’t have to be little moments.”

The other man hums an affirmation, but it’s too preoccupied, too absent minded to be true. Bucky lights up another cigarette and lets Steve steal a couple drags, watching the younger man’s eyes close as smoke pours out of his nostrils.

“Won’t get you high like your old asthma cigarettes, but they’re pretty great, huh?”

Steve nods and relaxes finally. “Yeah,” he mutters, scooting closer, “they are. Thanks.” When kisses Bucky, all Bucky can taste is the warmth of tobacco on the blond’s lips.

They order Chinese and watch a movie on the laptop while they wait for their food, his legs draped over Steve’s lap. It’s not a sad movie per se, but something burns in the pit of his stomach when the man in the wheelchair crawls into the incinerator so the other man can have the life he dreamed of. His breath catches and his eyes burn when the flames erupt and Steve laces their fingers together to calm him.

Their food comes and they eat in complete silence.

“Do you want to go to a Shabbat service tomorrow morning?” Steve asks carefully, breaking the heavy quietness that hangs above them. Bucky’s head snaps up, looking at the blond with wide eyes. Steve puts his fork down, hands tucking in his lap as he shrugs a shoulder. “You don’t have to. I just figured, after everything’s that’s happened this week, you might want to go. Union Temple is still open.”

Bucky smiles softly, remembering the two of them as kids watching the community house get built, watching the stories rise from the ground. His mom had said that there was going to be a beautiful new temple next to it, but the Depression hit and the plans were shelved. But he still remembers looking out over the faces of the crowd two years later, seeing Steve’s grinning face as he read from the Torah at his bar mitzvah.

“Can you come with me?” he asks quietly, pushing away the part of his brain that tells him that Steve is just trying to distract him from the younger man’s own problems by playing his cards right.

Steve nods at him, reaching a hand under the table and wrapping his long fingers around Bucky’s knee. “Of course I’ll come with you.”

The next morning, his leg jiggles nervously in the subway the entire ride. The last time Bucky had been to a service was before he left, the rabbi murmuring prayers of protection over him as his mother sobbed behind him. And then they sent him away from everything he loved and put a gun in his hands.

And that’s how Bucky had found himself in the trenches, muttering prayers under his breath in Hebrew, losing faith that anyone could hear him.

He had stopped praying altogether when Hydra took him.

“You okay, Buck?” Steve’s voice jolts him out of his head as the train car comes to a stop.

Bucky’s heart is pounding as he nods, stepping off the rain and up the stairs of the station. The early Saturday sun is bright as they weave through their old neighborhood, but it still feels like home. His breath catches when he sees the temple building. Their apartments buildings are gone, their neighborhood gentrified, but stepping in the heavy wooden doors, Bucky feels like he’s finally come home. Gone are the ornate ceiling, curtains, and chandeliers but the floors still creak in the same places.

His fingers run over the fringe of the tallitot on the racks and it puts a knot in his throat too large to swallow. He feels too lightheaded and Bucky’s not sure when he stopped breathing. He thinks about Sam’s words and how to stave off a panic attack but he can’t even take a breath, let alone hold one.

“Bucky, are you okay?” Steve’s voice is insistent, unsure, as he puts a hand on his shoulder.

Bucky’s knees buckle as he shakes his head, choking out, “I need to go. Now.”

The cold February air is a much needed relief as Steve pulls him out of the temple. Once they round the corner again, Bucky drops to his knees, gasping for oxygen. His fingers try to keep a firm hold on the cold cement, but all he does is chip the nails on his right hand. Steve crouches down next to him, a gentle hand on the back of Bucky’s neck as he asks, “Do you need anything?”

“I don’t belong here,” Bucky spits, trying to swallow the bile rising in his throat. “I don’t belong here, not now. Not anymore.” He looks up at Steve, vision blurry, and struggles to push himself up. “I just want to go home.”

~~~

He bolts upright in bed, chest heaving, when he hears a quiet creak in the floor. His breath comes silently through his mouth as he scans the room, finding it empty. There’s a scrape on the fire escape and Steve scrambles across the apartment, arm already through the straps in his shield, but there’s nobody outside.

It _has_ to be all in his head.

He texts Sam but doesn’t get a response back. He wasn’t expecting one, to be honest, especially at 1:57am.

The shield is heavy in his arm and for the first time in his life, Steve isn’t sure if he wants to carry the weight of it anymore. Why does he have to be the one waking up from the bumps in the night, from horrors that may not even exist anymore? Why can’t he just take a breath and go back to sleep like a normal person can? Why does it have to be _him_?

He watches Bucky sleep restlessly from the couch and can’t shake the feeling.

Sometimes when Steve looks at him, it feels like he’s crashing into the Arctic all over again, like he’s speeding into the ice. He had told Peggy it was his choice, but sometimes it had felt like the inevitable had caught up with him. Death had been hanging over him since he was born, so what better way to greet it than head on?

Now, it felt like death had begun chasing after him again with each moment of happiness.

He remembers hitting the ice, everything going black, but the rest is more foggy, more hazy, like Steve isn’t quite sure the memory existed. The one where he woke up after hours, after days, too cold to breathe, too cold to move, and tried to climb from the pilot’s chair. The one where he collapsed, blood slowing in his body, the air gone from his lungs.

He had tried to come home, he remembers that much. Looking across the room at the sleeping form, he wonders if Bucky had tried to come home too.

Steve thinks about what Bucky had said a couple weeks ago, about actually retiring and just being himself again, and the thought still haunts him. He’s damned either way; he can either retire and live with the guilt, or continue being Captain America and risk losing the love of his life all over again. He doesn’t think Bucky would ever leave him, but it’s a possibility.

Nothing seems concrete anymore.

Bucky rolls over around 5:32AM, stretching out a hand as he mumbles, “Come back to bed,” and all Steve can see is the reoccurring nightmare where Bucky turns to dust before he can get to him. The nightmare where Bucky is gone and there is nothing left for him. But he reaches him in time this morning, slipping back under the covers and into the warm spot Bucky has saved for him.

They sleep in late and eat cereal in bed and it’s good, for a while. Bucky fucks him roughly into the mattress mid-afternoon and it’s enough to stave off the anxiety he didn’t even know was growing in his chest.

“Steve, you sure you’re okay?” the older man asks from around his cigarette, looking up from his boots. Steve slips on his coat and nods offhandedly, grabbing his keys off the coffee table. Bucky huffs slightly and crosses his arms. “I’m serious, Steve. You’ve been off all day.”

“I’m fine, Buck. Can we not do this right now?” he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We’re going to miss the movie if you pick a fight.”

Bucky throws his hands up and rolls his eyes. “I’m not _trying_ to pick a fight,” he says desperately. “I’m just trying to get you to admit that things are fucking hard. Yesterday, I had a panic attack when you were out getting groceries yesterday and a bird flew into the window. I know it’s hard for you being out here with me the past month and a half. That tower, the Avengers, and S.H.I.E.L.D. have been the only things you’ve known since you got back and you don’t have any of them now, because of me.”

“It has nothing to do with-”

“It does and I’m _fine_ with it,” Bucky says, exasperation laced throughout his voice as he moves closer to Steve. “I just need you to admit that things aren’t perfect here and we can go see the god damn movie.”

“Fine!” he snaps. “I miss my friends, I miss when things were normal. I love you so god damn much, Bucky, but sometimes I wished you had just kept your _stupid_ mouth shut when it came to Stark’s parents.” He watches the older man flinch slightly, but Bucky keeps a good face. “We can sit out on the fire escape, smoke every cigarette in the world, but it still wouldn’t feel normal, and you know it.”

“It doesn’t have to be...” the other man says quietly. “It doesn’t have to be _normal_ for it to be _good_ , Steve.”

He runs a hand through his hair and looks at his watch. “Fuck, we’re going to be fucking late,” he groans, slamming his hand against the wall. “This is why I said I didn’t want to pick a god damn fight.”

Bucky leans back against the door and scrubs his hands over his face. “Can’t we just stop this for a second? Please?” he begs “Let’s just order from that Indian place across the street and you can pick out a movie from the internet thing.” He reaches out and wraps his metal fingers around Steve’s wrist. “Just c’mere.”

He relents, letting the older man pull him close, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s shoulders. Steve buries his face in the man’s broad shoulders and sighs. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs quietly. “I’m sorry for getting angry.”

Bucky chuckles against him and strokes the back of his hair, muttering, “You know, you’re allowed to get mad, Steve. Anybody that tries to get you to stop being pissed off or upset about shit is just trying to get you to shut up so you stop making them uncomfortable.” Steve can’t help but think about Peggy in the bar after Bucky fell, and maybe he has a point.

“Let’s just stay in,” he says distantly. “Like you said.”

So they order from the Indian place, just like Bucky wanted, and Steve eats far too much naan.

Bucky’s food is always far spicier than his, but he still sneaks a couple bites when the older man runs to the bathroom. It burns his mouth and makes his eyes water enough that Bucky gives him a look when he comes back. “You asshole, Rogers,” he says with a smirk.

“How can you eat that?” Steve coughs, sipping some of the water from the glass on the table. “Almost burned my mouth clean off.”

He waits for Bucky to laugh at him but the older man just leans against the doorway, head tilted as if he’s studying him. It’s quiet for a minute until as Bucky says, “Do you know what we should do after lunch? We should go out to Holy Cross and go visit your ma. I think it might do you some good, especially with how you’re feeling today.”

Steve swallows thickly and sets his food down carefully. “I haven’t been since I got back,” he says, avoiding Bucky’s stare. “I don’t even know why.”

“Finish up and we can go, okay? I think talking to your ma like you used to might help.”

They eat the rest of their food in silence, but Bucky reaches over and squeezes his knee gently and Steve feels himself grounded underneath the brunet’s firm grip. No more disappearing, Bucky was always there.

The cemetery is almost two miles, but it’s warmer out than it has been in days, so they walk instead of cramming on the train.

When Bucky reaches over to hold his hand, Steve still has to remind himself that it’s not illegal.

The cemetery is nearly empty when they get there, boots crunching over fallen leaves as they weave through the tombstones. They don’t even have to look at a map; Steve knows the way by heart, even if he hasn’t been back in 70 years.

The two headstones are covered in decades of growth, moss, and dirt, but there they are. He kneels in the cold damp dirt and begins brushing the stone over his ma’s grave clean with his gloved fingers. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the other man doing the same with his father’s.

It’s a couple quiet minutes before the names are revealed to the world again.

 _Joseph Fionn Rogers_  
_November 5, 1893 - May 8, 1918_

 _Sarah Aileen Rogers_  
_née Kelly_  
_April 11, 1898 - October 15, 1936_

“We should’ve brought flowers,” Steve mutters quietly, his fingers tracing the S in his ma’s name.

“Do you want me to go get some?” Bucky asks gently as he sits back on his heels. “There’s that grocery store over on Church that we passed. I’ll go grab some flowers and you can have some alone time.”

He nods, glancing over at the brunet as he says, “Thanks, Buck.”

Bucky leans over and presses a kiss to Steve’s head before pushing himself up. Steve watches the older man’s fingers brush over Sarah’s headstone as he heads out toward the path.

The wind shakes the leaves in the branches of the great oak tree, rattling through the silence.

“Hey Ma...” he mutters quietly, feeling the wetness from the earth soaking through his jeans. “Sorry I haven’t been back here in some time. Things have been hard ever since Bucky got back. Ever since I got back.” The ache in his chest grows when he spreads his fingers across the headstone.

“I bet you knew I loved him, didn’t you? And I bet you knew he loved me. You always let him in the door without question. He was as much your son as I was and I can’t believe how long it took me to understand why.” The wind catches underneath his scarf and sends a shiver down Steve’s spine. “I asked him to marry me, Ma. He told me to give him some time, but I think I’m going to ask him again soon. Then he’ll really be your son, won’t he?”

His face feels hot as tears prick his eyes. “I wish you could be here with me. We would’ve taken care of you just like you took care of me all those years,” Steve says faintly, voice thick. “You could be at the wedding. You would’ve been proud of me. Of both of us. But, then again, you always were.”

There’s soft footsteps behind him and Steve turns, watching Bucky come up the path. There are two bunches of white flowers hanging from the older man’s hand and one purple one, his ma’s favorite color.

“You tell her about me coming back?” Bucky asks, kneeling next to him.

“I think she already knows,” Steve says. “I feel like she’s been watching over us all these years. Keeping us safe. Bringing us back together.”

“You’re probably right. Definitely wasn’t _my_ mother keeping me alive so I could come home to you,” he says bitterly and Steve nudges their shoulders together. “She did a good job with you, Steve. Raising you.”

“She did a good job with _both_ of us.”

The wind shakes the leaves again and it’s just the right amount of silence.

~~~

Steve knows they can’t get drunk, god knows he would do anything for that, but the beer still tastes fucking great. Looking at Bucky sitting across from him instantly takes him back to 1943. After the rescue mission, back when things were easier. They’ve both got baseball caps on and he has on the ridiculous fake glasses on which, if Steve is being honest with himself, he doesn’t look that bad in. Anything to keep them from being recognized.

“You know, I kind of miss being a 5’4” and 90 pound lightweight,” Steve says, smiling softly into his pint glass. “Definitely saved on my bar tab.”

“I remember the first time you had a pint. It was your birthday,” Bucky says smirking. “I had to drag you on the subway after you passed out in Manhattan. Sarah was so mad.” He takes a drink of his beer. “She banned me from your apartment for a month,” he says, smile fading.

Steve can feel the tears prick his eyes as he murmurs, “You came back when she took a turn for the worse...”

Bucky offers a half smile and says, “She would been proud of you, you know that, right?”

He nods softly, his shoe nudging Bucky’s ankle. “She would be proud of both of us.”

“Grant?”

They both startle slightly and look up at the dark haired man who has approached their table. Steve’s heart sinks as he looks at Bucky’s face, the other man visibly upset as he looks into a mirror image of himself.

His voice is uneasy as he turns to the other man, muttering, “Hey...”

“ _Andy_ ,” the man reminds him, mildly annoyed.

Steve clicks his tongue and nods, saying,” “That’s right. How’s it going, Andy? What’re you doing in New York?”

Andy crosses his arms and rolls his steel blue eyes. “That’s rich, asking how I’m doing when you and I have a great time for three months and then drop off the face of the planet.” He leans his hands on the table and says, “Don’t make promises you don’t plan on keeping, Grant. That just makes you an asshole.”

Andy stalks off and Steve winces as Bucky spits, “Really? _Grant_?”

Steve looks across at Bucky’s scowling face boring a hole through his skull. “Bucky... it’s not... it’s not like that.”

“He looks _just_ like me!” Bucky says, his voice raising a little higher than it should. Steve ducks his head as a couple people in the bar glance at them. The brunet pushes his glass away, leaning in to hiss, “Is that what you did? Go trolling gay bars in New York and DC hoping to find someone that looked like me? While I was being tortured out in Siberia?”

“I thought you were _dead_. Not to mention the fact that, before you fell, neither of us had done anything about what’s been pretty clear for a while.”

Bucky laughs bitterly and it’s sharp enough to put shrapnel into Steve’s heart. “I bet if I found the girls you fucked, they’d look just like Peggy. Couldn’t have her and wouldn’t have me so you found yourself replacements, is that it?”

The barstool slams into the table as Bucky gets up and storms off into the bathroom. Steve watches him leave and slams his hand on the table. “Fuck!” he exclaims, not even caring at the beer sloshing out of his mug. He remembers catching a glimpse at Andy across the room in that seedy club in DC and it was like seeing a ghost. If he hadn’t noticed the birthmark across the young man’s chest, he would’ve sworn it was Bucky.

Face down, getting fucked into the mattress, Steve had closed his eyes, put the screaming thoughts away and pretended it was Bucky’s hands on his hips, Bucky’s lips on the small of his back. And when he came, it was with a quiet, _“James,”_ bitten into his pillow.

The bathroom door slams open as he barges in, Bucky jumping from the corner. “I wasn’t trying to replace you,” Steve says, eyes dark. “I thought you were _dead_. You had been dead for 70 years and I didn’t think anything was going to bring you back.” Bucky watches him through his dark hair, unconvinced. “I thought I could...” Steve says, words failing him. “I missed you so _fucking_ much.”

His body crashes against the door as Bucky slams him back, kissing him roughly. Steve tries to get his hands between them, but Bucky just pins them back above his head. He can feel the metal dig into the skin of his wrists and thinks faintly about the bruises he hopes are there tomorrow. He inhales sharply through his nose as Bucky nips open the inside of his bottom lip, copper blood seeping into their mouths. “It should’ve been me,” Bucky growls into his lips. “It should’ve been _me_.”

Steve doesn’t know how he ends up on his knees, Bucky’s cock down his throat, but there he is, unidentifiable dampness soaking up his jeans from the floor.

Bucky comes with a shudder and a low groan, metal fist clenching in his short blond hair. Steve coughs, throat aching as he looks up at the older man. “Is this a good enough apology?” he asks, eyebrow arching.

Bucky’s eyes are dark as his mouth pulls into a coy smirk. “It’s a start.”

He gets a foot up to stand but he stops. Looks up at Bucky, realizing that the ache in his heart and throat may be from something else. The other man looks down at Steve, frozen on the floor, brow beginning to furrow.

“What are you doing?”

Steve’s heart races as he looks up at at Bucky and asks quietly, “Will you marry me now?”

Bucky backs further into the door, body desperately trying to sink into the wood. He looks around anxiously and whispers harshly, “Steve, I thought we already talked about this. We can’t get _married_.” His face is less unsure and more worried than the first time he asked. But the reality was, neither of them know how to be together, to be happy together.

“Bucky, don’t make me ask you again. Marry me.”

The older man sinks to the grimy floor in front of Steve and kisses him carefully, hesitantly. Kisses him like he still doesn’t know the answer to the question between them.

But then Bucky pulls away, black pupils shining like two moons against a grey blue sky as he says, “Fine, I’ll marry you.”

They walk in silence back to the apartment. Steve calls the airline and books them two flights to Las Vegas for the morning as the other man packs the suitcase. They share a quiet smile when the agent puts him on hold and Steve starts to think about forever.

Bucky fucks him soft and slow into the mattress that night. Fucks him for hours, fucks him like he’s laying the foundation of their future, brick by brick, thrust by thrust. It leaves Steve shaking and gasping for breath like he’s drowning, his nails dug into the soft skin of Bucky’s hips. And they both come, shockwaves rolling over their bodies as they gasp each other’s names into corresponding mouths. Exhausted, they lay on the rumpled sheets, naked bodies reflecting the streetlights outside. Steve rolls his head to study Bucky’s face; the older man has his eyes closed, dark eyelashes brushing over his flushed cheeks.

“Buck?” he mumbles tiredly.

The older man cracks an eye open and yawns as he asks, “Mhmm?”

“I’m gonna marry the _hell_ out of you tomorrow.”

And Bucky chuckles, deep in his chest, as he closes his eyes again. “Get some sleep, Steve. We have a wedding to attend.”

They both sleep peacefully for once, for the first time since Bucky left for the war.

The hardest adjustment for Steve from being just Steve to being _Steve-but-Captain-America_ was the fawning people did the moment they saw him. They walk into the airport and from the second he leans against the counter, they’re upgraded to first class, walked straight through security without doing anything, Bucky watching the metal detectors anxiously, and are put up in the captains’ lounge.

They sit in the corner, baseball caps pull low over their faces. He watches Bucky’s leg jiggle nervously as they wait for their flight to be called. Steve puts a hand on his knee and murmurs, “It’s going to be okay. It’s just a plane.”

Bucky scoffs quietly. “Sorry, small spaces with no exit still freak me out.”

Steve remembers back in the field when they were behind enemy lines, curled tight together in the fortress they had built over the years together. Everyone, including Steve, had brushed their closeness off to their life and death situation but, looking back, he should have realized the intention behind the face Bucky made every time Steve caught him staring. The preoccupied gaze from across the abandoned barn in Nazi occupied France, Bucky’s eyes silver in the moonlight. They had lost so much time.

They board the plane an hour later, heads still down as Steve plops down in the second row of first class. Bucky climbs over his legs to tuck into the window seat, knees bumping the seat in front of him.

He’s so distracted watching Bucky, watching for any signs of the other man’s nervousness, that he doesn’t even realize _he’s_ the one with his hands clenched around the armrests.

Steve pulls the headphones from his backpack and sticks one in his ear, and the other in Bucky’s. The other man leans his head on his shoulder and sighs quietly as soft jazz echoes in Steve’s ear.

He could get used to this.

~~~

Las Vegas is too bright, too busy, and there are too many people. And, no matter how tightly Steve holds his hand, there’s a small hum in the back of his head that tells him they’re too exposed.

But his heart tells his head that he’s crazy, so he puts it out of his mind.

Bucky blinks and there’s Steve.

He blinks again and they’re signing paperwork and NDAs. His heart races in his chest and his brain feels foggy, thoughts flowing out like water through a sieve. His stomach flips but he wonders if it’s just from the nerves.

He blinks again and he’s nodding his head and muttering, “Yeah,” and Steve is sliding a ring on his right hand and kissing him deliberately.

He blinks again and smiles. “We’re married, aren’t we?” he asks quietly.

Steve smiles back, blue eyes bright, and looks up at the terribly fake white flowers above them. “Yeah, Buck. We are.”

Bucky blinks again and stumbles over the curb. How did they get outside? Wasn’t it mid afternoon a second ago. Steve catches his shoulder and he isn’t sure where they are. He spins wildly, gasping quickly, “What just happened?”

“What are you talking about?” Steve’s voice is dark and wary as confusion seeps into his face. A siren wails in the distance and Bucky spins again, trying to track the sound. “Bucky?”

He hisses, crying out as a stabbing pain erupts, deep in his chest, spreading from the wires in his shoulders. The younger man grabs Bucky’s arm, stopping him in his tracks. The pain burns hotter, dropping him to his knees, screaming.

A crowd begins to gather as Steve drops down next to him. “Bucky, what the hell is going on?!”

He blinks again and his vision goes black. Bucky gasps for air, clawing at his chest as the burning spreads through his body. He heaves, emptying black liquid from his body onto the sidewalk. The whispers of the crowd turns into a roar as the sirens come for him now. Everything goes black again and he finds himself staring up at Steve’s terrified face. He’s yelling something into his phone and Bucky’s spine is so straight, like a metal rod up each vertebrae, arching him into something unnatural.

He retches violently, his lungs flooding with fluid. Bucky’s throat closes as his chest fights for breath. All he can taste is tainted blood as it pours out of his mouth and his mind races back to the boy that had grasped at his legs, dying in front of him in Hydra’s grasp.

Bucky can feel Steve’s hand wrap around his, holding tight as he screams unintelligibly.

He blinks again and all he can see is blood.

There’s a soft white light around the edges of his pitch black vision. It comes into focus and there is Sarah Rogers, her strawberry blonde hair falling loosely around her face. She holds her thin hand out to him, murmuring, _“You know you’re always safe here, James. Never forget that.”_

He wants to take her hand so badly but keeps them at his sides. _“I’m sorry, Ms. Sarah. I have to go look after Steve. He needs me.”_

_“Then go.”_

A rush of air floods into his lungs as he struggles on the table. He opens his mouth to scream but it just comes out as a wheeze, the wind seeping through the hole above his sternum. The pain still radiates from his shoulder, but it’s a dull ache instead of the fire through his body. Bucky clenches his fists but, the moment his right hand closes into his palm, all he hears is a broken whirring.

It’s like an out of body experience, the moment when he raises his hand to touch the metal in his shoulder and finds it torn open, his left arm missing.

Bucky stumbles off the table and drops to the floor with an inaudible thud. His stomach lurches as his face crashes into the bay door.

Pushing himself up, he stumbles against the wall. The pain from his shoulder begins to spread again but he can breathe, at least barely. There’s a window across from him and all he can see is dark clouds.

He turns the sharp corner and stops when he hears familiar voices.

“Tony and I should’ve caught it, Steve. That scan we did just didn’t go through the shoulder plates. You managed to keep him alive until we got there. It wasn’t your fault.” It sounds like Bruce, quiet and far away.

“You guys did the best you could.” And there was Steve, voice thick and stoic as he sits on the floor with his back to him, Bruce and Natasha on either side. Bucky braces himself against the doorway and tries to get his vision to stop swimming. Steve sniffs and stares at his blood covered hands as he says, “I should’ve realized what was happening sooner. I didn’t think, after almost six months...”

Bucky tries to croak out Steve’s name, but it just comes out as an inaudible rasp.

Natasha puts a hand on the blond’s rigid should and says, “Hydra prides itself on having a monopoly on ruining lives.”

His footsteps falter as he tries to cross the inside of the quinjet wing. Bucky crashes into one of the seats, grabbing hold to stop himself from falling over. Natasha, Bruce, and Steve all jerk their heads up, eyes wide like they’re seeing a ghost. Steve rises from the floor, blinking carefully, like he’s hallucinating in a dream he doesn’t want to wake from.

His mouth drops open as he whispers, “You were _dead_. I _watched_ you die.”

All Bucky can answer with is a quiet wheeze, grabbing at the rust colored stains drenched across red front of Steve’s body.

And suddenly, Natasha and Bruce are peeling him away and dragging him back around the corner, Natasha asking in astonishment, “How the hell is he still alive?”

“Only thing I can think of,” Bruce offers, “is that the super soldier serum dropped his heartbeat low enough to keep him alive while we took his arm off and counteracted the poison.” They drop him roughly back on the table, Natasha grabbing the medical kit. Bruce grabs a flashlight and shines it in Bucky’s eyes as he says, “Other than that, I have no idea.”

Bucky doesn’t even get the chance to swallow before Natasha sticks a syringe in his neck repeatedly, numbing the area. His eyes slip closed, painkillers hitting him again, and he can feel the pull of a needle and thread against skin.

“He bled out in my arms,” Steve mumbles faintly, as if he’s still not sure this is real. “There was so much _blood_.”

“S-Steve...” Bucky rattles, the gash in his throat finally sewn together. When he can finally pull his eyes open, there are three sets of the familiar blue eyes above him, Steve’s face swinging around his vision in triple. “Wh-hat...”

“Hydra put a fail safe trigger in your arm,” Steve grits out, anger boiling over the worry in his body. “They were just _watching_ us, waiting until... until we were _happy_ , to kill you.”

“You’re both lucky Banner took a year of toxicology as an elective,” Natasha says, wiping her hands with a nearby towel. “And that your shitty hotel room was literally the easiest lock I’ve ever had to get through in my entire life. Couldn’t have gotten your arm off without Rogers’s shield. He hacked through that thing in, like, five seconds.”

“He was _dying_ , Nat,” Steve snaps, glaring at the redhead.

Bucky can almost remember Steve shouting, _“What do I do? What do I do?!”_ before slamming his shield over and over into his arm, trying to open the metal joint. He does remembers the pain though, the blinding agony like when he first lost the arm.

He swallows, throat dry as sand, and mouths, “Thank you.”

Steve tries to smile down at him but it gets caught behind the worry. The moment Bucky had seen the Hydra weapons in the battlefield, he knew his life would never been the same. But he could deal with it, he was the one with his foot already in the dark part of his mind. Then Steve showed up and they plunged into hell together. Funny of either of them to pretend they could have a normal life.

But Bucky still wraps his fingers loosely around Steve’s wrist and simulates normalcy as best he can.

The bandage around his neck feels like a noose, like a collar, like something familiar but Bucky can’t quite put his finger on it. But Steve’s fingers intertwined with his and the painkillers rushing through his bloodstream seem to ease the pain. Any time he shifts, he hears the wires sparking, the gears crunching in his chest, but it’s low under the rush of blood in his ears.

“We’ll be landing in a couple minutes,” Natasha calls from the front of the quinjet. “Tony’s going to meet us with Helen Cho in the lab.”

His body jolts and, through his haze, he can see Steve’s body tense. “Why is Tony offering to help. That doesn’t sound like him, especially after what happened.” The younger man’s hand is tight in his and Bucky is too drugged to protest.

“I finally was able to decode the Winter Soldier files from the S.H.I.E.L.D file dump,” she says delicately. “They were very, how should I say this, detailed about Barnes’s time in Hydra.”

“Who else has seen them?” Steve asks, voice taut and strained.

“Me, Tony, Fury. Nobody else.”

His body jolts again as the quinjet touches down, the bay door opening. Bucky’s feet touch the ground shakily as he throws his remaining arm around Steve’s neck. His heart is racing but he doesn’t know if it’s from being back at the tower or from the pain still engulfing his upper body. “S-Steve?” he mutters blearily, fighting through sedatives as they walk slowly across the landing pad. “I’m... sorry for... coming back...” His legs give out on the flight deck and he drops to his knees. “For... staying...”

“Bucky, just hang on-”

He blinks and there’s only darkness.

He blinks again. _Darkness_.

Finally, Bucky opens his eyes to find all the pain in his body gone and, for a moment, he’s sure he’s dead. He’s waiting to find himself on Steve’s fire escape, the sickly bitter smell of Steve’s asthma cigarettes seeping in his lungs from the other side of the metal grate. And he would look at Steve, the younger man smiling at him from the corner, and they would be happy.

But he wakes up to another table, another experiment, one after the other after the other.

Bucky blinks, the lights above him in hyper clear focus, and sucks in a deep breath. The bandage around his neck is gone and he touches is it, the new skin covering where the stitches once stood. “Steve?” he calls, voice raspy as he sits up.

The broken metal has been taken off, just the pear shaped rise of the inner shoulder is left, holes where the fail safe wires had been, now plugged. When he touches it, there’s no feeling anymore. His body, finally cut off from Hydra’s only use for him, finally his own and no one else’s.

Steve and Natasha appear up the stairs, Steve’s bright eyes finally unclouded by fear. “Bucky,” he breathes, “you’re awake.” The blond is across the room before Bucky can even react, pulling him up into a tight embrace. Steve’s breath is hot and shaky against the back of his neck as he says, “I thought I had lost you again.” The words had been repeated so many times that they’ve started to lose meaning at this point but Bucky still wraps them tight around his heart.

He comes back, pulling away from Steve, and asks hoarsely, “What did Stark do to me? My arm.”

Steve sighs as his hand hovers over the metal stump. “Fixed what I had to do to you,” he says. “But they can make you a new arm, they can-”

“I don’t _want_ a new arm,” he spits brokenly, hand clenching in the soft fabric of the other man’s shirt hem. He lets out a shaky breath, trying to ground himself, trying to come back and be a person again, but all Bucky can do is look at Steve dejectedly. “I don’t want to be a weapon anymore.”

The blond nods quickly, murmuring, “You don’t have to be.”

He can feel the ghost of his arm just as much as he can feel the ghost of himself inside his soul, and Bucky is starting to wonder if he’ll ever feel whole again, or if it’s just become a dream he tells himself at night to stop the shaking.

~~~

Steve tucks Bucky into one of the couches and smoothes his hand over the exhausted man’s face. Then, he takes an elevator ride.

Tony, Natasha, and Fury are already waiting for him up in Stark’s penthouse. Steve eyes the seven inch pile of folders sitting on the coffee table and can’t even imagine what kind of horrors lie within. Nick motions to the chair across from them and says bluntly, “Sit down, Rogers.”

He sits uneasily in the chair and says, “I want those files destroyed. Non negotiable.”

Tony leans forward and says, “Cap, I know we’ve had our issues, but I want you to know-”

“No,” Steve snaps. “You don’t get to speak after what you put him through. He should have been able to stay here at the tower, here where it was safe. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”

“I want you to know,” Tony says, raising his voice slightly to speak over him, “I thought Barnes was lying at first, exaggerating, you know. I didn’t think there was any way Hydra would have done everything he said to one person.” He motions to the stack of files. “I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

“You should’ve recorded that, Rogers,” Natasha says, offering a trademark smirk. “I don’t think any of us will hear that again.”

Steve crosses his arms across his chest across his chest and shakes his head, brushing off the joke. He’s in no mood for it; Bucky’s blood is still drying on the front of his T-shirt and his screams still echo in Steve’s head. “The only thing I should thank you for is taking the rest of his arm off,” he says icily. “And I don’t even know if I should do that.” He watches Tony look away petulantly and it doesn’t even come close to how much he wants the other man to hurt for what he did.

“Okay, this whole pissing match thing is done. Over,” Fury says, motioning annoyedly between the two men. “Shake hands and move on.” Steve sets his jaw and extends his hand, but grips Tony’s a little too hard, making the billionaire wince. Fury gives him a look but just rolls his eye and sighs. “So,” he starts, “About these files...”

“Burn them,” Steve grits quietly. “I don’t need to see what’s inside.”

“Steve, they aren’t the only ones that exist. The data dump went straight to the internet,” Natasha warns. “I can see how much can be scrubbed and put a bug on everything else, but there’s no telling how many people downloaded the files. I might not be the only one that ends up decrypting them.”

“How long did it take you?”

“It’s taken me five months, but I knew what I was looking for and how to do it. It’d probably take anyone else a decade,” she says, shrugging.

“So Bucky’s got about ten years until his life is ruined again once people start finding out what he’s gone through?” he asks, almost to himself. Steve sighs and puts his head in his hands, just thinking about Bucky’s face when he has to tell him that the worst years of his life could be decoded with enough time and dedication.

“We don’t know anyone else is going to decrypt those files,” Fury says and it’s not reassuring in any sense. “Romanoff is the best at what she does. I’d try and rest easy, Cap.”

“After what happened today, I don’t know if I know how to do that anymore.” All he can think about is the blood pouring out of Bucky’s mouth as Steve tried to cut into his arm. Drowning from the inside out. “They must have been watching us,” he says quietly. “They had to have started in Brooklyn. Followed us to Vegas. How do you come back from something like that? Bucky’s _never_ going to feel safe now.”

He watches Natasha shoot Tony a look and Tony sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Just move back into the Tower, Cap. Nobody can touch Barnes here.”

“You don’t know that, Stark.”

“Anybody gets too close to him, I’ll just have J.A.R.V.I.S blast ‘em,” Tony says, waving him off dismissively. “If I think Pepper is safe enough here, Barnes will be too.” The man’s voice has lowered into something more real, stripped of the braggadocio that usually followed in his steps.

Steve meets his gaze and it’s enough of an armistice as either of them could agree to in this moment.

He nods and says, “Okay, we’ll come back. We’ll come back home.”

Fury nods approvingly and picks up the stack of files, saying, “Now that that’s settled, I’ll leave you idiots to your own devices. I’ll make sure these get burned to a crisp.”

Watching Nick leave, Steve still can’t shake the unease from his shoulders, the tenseness that was pulling him tight. The flashes of his hands covered in blood, of Bucky’s lifeless body draped over the stretcher. “You okay, Rogers?” Natasha asks, low voice full of worry.

He clears his throat, muttering agitatedly, “I have to go.”

Steve almost makes it to the elevators before his arm is pulled back. Natasha looks at him apprehensively and says, “Steve, why were you and Barnes in Vegas? I didn’t ask because the call sounded urgent, and Bruce doesn’t give a shit, but I need you to tell me now, okay?” Her grey blue eyes are soft but concerned about him and she has a tight grip around his forearm.

“It doesn’t matter why we were there, Natasha,” he snaps, pulling out of her grasp.

The elevator doors whoosh open as she says, “I saw the rings, you know.” Steve freezes, his hand gripping the doorway. “I saw you take them off after you thought Barnes was gone.”

“You didn’t see anything,” he growls, turning to face the redhead.

“Steve, you guys got _married_. You should at least let us be happy for you, especially now that you both are still alive.” She puts her hands on her hips, mouth pressed into a thin line as she says, “I know this isn’t your first choice, having to come back here and deal with Stark after what went down, but you don’t have to hold a grudge.”

“I don’t have anything to thank him for, Natasha. Now, if you’ll excuse me...”

The elevator doors close around him and all Steve can do is stare at the dried blood still covering his arms and shirt.

Sam lets him in with no questions asked, no snarky responses, just an open door. Steve scrubs his skin raw in the bathroom, fingers shaking as he scours his arms and hands. The weight of the silver rings is heavy in his hands as he rinses the metal off under the hot water and shoves them back in his pocket. He only stops after there’s a soft knock on the door, after he’s taken a layer of skin off the back of his hand. “You okay in there, Cap?” Sam calls quietly, muffled through the bathroom door.

Steve strips out of the bloody T-shirt and pulls on the clean one Sam had handed him. He closes his eyes and tries to steady himself on the door handle but he’s not sure it works, because Sam immediately looks concerned when he opens the door.

“You look like _shit_.”

He lets out a shaky breath tries to swallow the acid that’s clawing its way up his throat as he chokes out, “Can you please not do this right now?”

Sam doesn’t try and say anything else, just lets Steve sit silently sit on his couch, head in his hands. There’s an uneasy silence but it’s more comfortable than anything either of them could say to each other.

They sit like that for who knows how long until the door creaks open.

He lifts his head to see Bucky and Natasha standing in the doorway, the older man braced carefully against the redhead’s body. “They said we have to come back and stay here,” Bucky croaks, voice still raspy from the injury. “Is that true?”

Steve nods, his stomach turning when he sees the older man’s eyes glaze over numbly. “This is the safest place for us,” he whispers. Natasha helps the brunet across the room as Steve stands up. He takes Bucky’s hand and wraps his arms tightly around the other man. Holds on to him so tight, Steve thinks their bodies might melt together. “We don’t have any other choice.”

“I’m having Clint go pick up your things back in Brooklyn before he heads home,” Natasha says. “That way you don’t have to go back out. He’s checking for bugs too. See if we can get any leads.”

“Thanks Nat,” Steve mutters tiredly. “For everything.”

Bucky peels away from his body and Steve can see Sam raise an eyebrow at the man’s missing arm, but is grateful he doesn’t try and say anything. “You boys go upstairs and try and get some rest,” Natasha says, patting his shoulder. “It’s been a long day for you both.”

Steve’s apartment smells like someone had brought a cleaning crew in, but nothing has moved an inch since they were last in there two months ago. He wouldn’t have noticed anyone had even been in there if the couch wasn’t repaired, the wall wasn’t patched, and the door wasn’t hung back on the hinges. So much damage just covered, like it never really happened. Like nothing had left scars.

He watches Bucky look around the suite nervously, like Steve’s not the only one replaying the turmoil that happened when they were here last. “I guess they knew we would have to come back.”

“I guess,” Steve says, digging in his pocket. “Come here, Buck.” The older man obeys his request without argument, footsteps still heavy and unsteady. He takes Bucky’s hand and slips the ring back on his finger before putting his own on. “I thought you were gone,” he murmurs. “It was the only thing I thought I could keep.”

Bucky sews a wavering smile across his face as he whispers, “I’m still here, that’s all that matters now.”

They spend the rest of the night staring up at the ceiling, sleep evading both of them in their solicitude. Steve keeps his fingers intertwined with Bucky’s, the nightmares of his love turning into dust in his arms fading away.

It’ll never truly leave him, but the less clear it seems, the easier he can breathe.

~~~

“So, you and Rogers got hitched.”

Bucky looks up from his cup of coffee to see Natasha lean against the table next to him. Everyone had been giving him a wide berth since they came back, three weeks ago, except Pepper, Clint, and Natasha. Clint had even let him win a game of poker yesterday. It hadn’t been all fun and games, but the dread had begun to lessen. He takes a sip from his mug and looks up at the redhead. “What about it, Romanoff?”

“We want to throw you guys a party, since you assholes decided to elope without telling anyone.”

“Who’s ‘ _we’_?” he asks, eyes narrowing. “Me, Pepper, and Hill. Pepper’s been spearheading the whole thing. You should’ve seen the way she chewed out Rogers when she saw that ring on his finger,” Natasha says with a smirk.

“I didn’t even know Pepper was capable of chewing anyone out,” Bucky chuckles softly.

“You should see her with Tony and Steve. Someone needs to keep those idiots in line,” she says. “Can’t always be me.”

Bucky leans his head on his hand and sighs. All the attention from a party is the last thing he wants right now, but maybe it’s a small step back into a normal life. A normal life somewhere safe, where Hydra couldn’t touch him, couldn’t touch Steve. Natasha jabs him repeatedly in the ribs, jolting him out of his thoughts. Throwing his hands up, he lets out an exasperated groan and says, “Fine, Romanoff. Go tell Pepper and Maria to throw that party. But it can’t be anything big. We’re not ready for that just yet.”

Natasha ruffles his hair and smacks his cheek gently. “Of course not. Just something small to celebrate our favorite senior citizens.”

“Almost 98 years old and I can still kick your ass, so watch your little Russian mouth.”

“Not without that bionic arm, you can’t. Don’t test me, Barnes,” she says, punching his arm gently before heading toward the elevator. She stops for a second, sticking her head back into the common room. “Oh, Clint wants to know if we’re still on for blackjack tomorrow? Sam said he wants in too.”

Bucky tips his head back and lets out a deep sigh. “Fucking finally. Something I can actually win. Tell Barton it’s on.”

Natasha gives him a small smile and says, “You know, I’m glad you’re back home, Barnes. We missed you and Rogers.” The redhead disappears around the corner before he can respond, but her comment still sits heavy in his chest. To not just be needed, but to be wanted.

He makes another pot of coffee and empties the can of Carnation he had opened earlier. Yesterday, he had finally gotten Steve to take a sip and actually admit that it wasn’t half bad, and it was the first time he had seen the blond smile since they had come back. It was the little things like that that were keeping him going.

Pouring himself another cup, Bucky sits out on the rooftop deck, watching the bright early morning sun melt away the spring dusting of snow in calm silence.

The door creaks open after an hour and he smiles at the familiar glint of blond hair. “You got up early,” Steve says, sitting down on the bench next to him. “Wasn’t sure where you went, so I made breakfast without you.”

“I went swimming this morning,” he says quietly, rolling his head to look at the other man.

Steve looks at him, apprehension burning his thin smile as he asks, “Did it go okay? I mean, I wasn’t sure if you and the whole water thing-”

“Steve, I’m fine,” Bucky interrupts, cutting off the younger man’s babbling. “I didn’t get my face wet. It was just hard to get used to only swimming with only my right arm.” He sets his cup down on the bench. “It was easier than trying to zip my sweatshirt up last night, at least.”

“How long did it take you again? Five minutes?” the blond snickers quietly.

“Eight.”

“You could have just asked for help, you know,” Steve says, nudging their knees together.

He sighs, carefully sliding his fingers in between Steve’s. “I need to learn how to do things for myself,” he says. “I know you’ll always be here with me, but I can’t have you helping with everything.”

Bucky watches the younger man pull their hands up to his lips, kissing them lightly before turning to kiss him, deeply and tenderly. Bucky leans into the kiss and all he wants to do is run both of his hands through Steve’s blond hair, but he can’t. He knows that will be the one thing he’ll never adjust to.

“The girls are going to throw us a wedding reception,” he murmurs when Steve finally pulls away. “Natasha strong armed me into agreeing to it. Pepper and Maria have a hand in the whole thing too.”

“It’s going to be a big production, isn’t it?” Steve groans, running a hand over his face.

He shakes his head. “I made her promise me that it was going to stay a small party. She knows I still can’t do big crowds. I trust Natasha. And Pepper. Hill is the one you have to watch out for. Remember karaoke night and she invited half of Manhattan?”

“Clint did do a fantastic Whitney Houston cover that night though.”

“It was fucking amazing, from what I could hear through the windows of the lab,” Bucky reminds him. After the eightieth person had showed up, Bucky had nearly had a full blown panic attack, crushing a glass in his metal hand and freezing in the middle of the crowd until Steve was able to drag him out into the lab. They had sat on the floor for almost five minutes, Bucky hyperventilating, trying to slow his breathing until he was okay enough to have the younger man rejoin the party.

It was the last thing he wanted at his own wedding reception.

“Okay, well I should probably go make sure it doesn’t get too out of hand,” Steve says, kissing him on the cheek before standing up and heading toward the door.

“Use that Rogers charm, otherwise I doubt they’ll let you help,” he calls, chuckling when the blond flips him off before disappearing.

Bucky sits up on the deck for a couple more hours before he finally peels himself off the bench and heads back downstairs. The elevator takes him down to Steve’s floor and he digs in his pocket to fish the key out.

They had finally gotten everything back out of storage and unpacked, the little touches making everything feel a little more like home. It was still a little strange being back and part of him misses their shitty apartment in Brooklyn, back when things were a little easier. But the framed picture of the two of them standing under the silk flowers, smiling faces unaware of the horrors that were going to come, was enough of a reminder that this was the safest place for them.

His arm still ached something fierce but it was easily forgotten with enough effort.

Grabbing one of his cigarettes out of the tins on the coffee table, he lights it, smoke billowing out of his nose as he stares out the windows. Steve had a new painting set up in the den, one of Bucky’s back draped with flowers that weaved in and out of his skin. It was more surreal than the meticulous portraits that the younger man usually did, but it was one of Bucky’s favorite pieces that he had done, even if it wasn’t even finished.

The living room smelled like paint and cigarettes and them and god help him if he never wanted this to end.

He pulls out his own sketchbook and charcoals, finishing the sketches of Natasha and Bruce he had been working on as thank you gifts for the past day or so. He was planning on doing this be of Pepper eventually, but he knew she wasn’t in a rush for any thanks. She was so used to accepting his smiles as payment of his gratitude, but Bucky wanted her to have something more tangible, after all she had done for him.

Sam had talked to him about the PTSD and the guilt he had felt after all the damage he had caused, and had said that making amends could help relieve some of those thoughts.

The journals, the physical exercise to try and get the excess anxiety out of his system, telling his friends when he appreciated them, all just steps into recovery.

The nightmares had begun to come less and less, the panic attacks farther and farther apart. It was a step in the right direction, he just had to keep moving his feet. He was able to talk more openly to Steve about certain things that had happened. Was less jumpy when there were loud noises. Could be touched by people other than Steve without looking for an escape route.

He knew that redemption wasn’t ever an option, not after everything that had happened.

But reclamation?

Reclamation was within his grasp.

~~~

The night of the party, Bucky swims fifty laps in the pool before showering and changing into his dress clothes. Steve had taken it upon himself to have all of the left sleeves on his shirts and jackets tailored so they would fit better and Bucky didn’t mind the effort. It made him feel less like he was missing something that needed to be replaced and more like it was something to just be accepted.

He had picked out the navy blue velvet blazer from New Years Eve. It was time to weave positive memories into it instead of letting the heartache persist.

Bucky heads toward the elevator to meet Steve upstairs when he hears a voice call out to him.

“Barnes! Hey, hold up!”

Bucky freezes when he hears the voice, turning quickly to see Tony approaching quickly. Everything in his body screams ‘ _MOVE_ ’ but he can’t get his legs to work as his heart races in his chest. They haven’t seen each other since Bucky and Steve had left, each of them trying to avoid the other. He flinches when Tony holds out a hand but the younger man slows down, muttering, “Hey, I’m not here to hurt you.”

“What do you want?” he breathes as his chest tightens. He clenches his fist to keep it from shaking and backs up a step.

Tony lowers his hand and Bucky flinches involuntarily when he pulls the other one out of his suit pocket. “See,” the shorter man says reassuringly, “I don’t have anything on me. I’m just here to talk.”

His heart rate doesn’t slow at all as he stares at Stark’s hands, asking, “Talk about what?”

“I’m sorry,” he says apologetically. “I shouldn’t have done what I did. You were as much of a victim as they were and I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was letting my emotions cloud my judgment. Something my therapist says I need to work on.” Bucky watches him warily, waiting for any sudden moment, and he can’t shake the feeling, no matter what Stark says. Tony sighs and repeats, “I’m not here to hurt you.”

“You’ve _already_ hurt me,” Bucky mutters a little too harshly.

“I know that, and that’s why I’ve come with a peace offering.”

They take the stairs down through the tower, deep into the basement, and Bucky stays ten steps behind Tony, eyes darting around the stairwell for any danger. Stark doesn’t comment on it but Bucky knows that he’s watching him out of the corner of his eye. They get to a door almost ten stories down and Tony places his palm on a scanner and J.A.R.V.I.S’s voice echoes, “Welcome back, sir.”

The younger man pulls the heavy metal door open, motioning for Bucky to go ahead of him.

There’s a brightly lit cell in the center of the room and Bucky has flashbacks to being in CIA custody. It’s not as big as the one he was in, but the design is almost identical. Something in the back of his mind whispers that Stark was likely the one who engineered the one he had been placed in.

Bucky freezes when he sees the man strapped to the chair inside.

Karpov.

His mouth is covered by a metal mask, keeping him silent like Bucky had been forced to be all those years in Hydra. The man’s eyes flash in realization when he sees him circle the cell. Free from Hydra, free of their grasp on him, Bucky was himself first now and Karpov could tell that he was almost more dangerous like that.

“Like I said,” Tony says, motioning to the cell before crossing his arms across his chest. “Olive branch.”

“Where did you find him?” Bucky asks quietly, eyes locked with the Russian.

“Cleveland, of all places. Deep in hideout. Put up a bit of a fight, but nothing Rhodes and I couldn’t handle.”

His gaze turns to the small table outside the cell and the handgun sitting on top of it. Bucky runs his fingers over the cold metal, thumb tracing the curve of the trigger. He picks it up, pulling the slide back against his thigh, a bullet already in the chamber. “What are you going to do with him?” he asks, blood pounding through his ears. The gun is heavy in his hand, even after all this time of wishing he could be in this exact position.

“ _I’m_ not doing anything with him,” Stark says, leaning back against the wall, and Bucky finally understands his intentions. “He’s all yours.”

He had dreamed of a day like this. Every time Karpov had brought him out of cryo, every time the Halo had left him shaking, unable to remember his own name, every beating, every violation to his body had only fueled his hatred of the man. Those precious moments when he would start to come back into his own head, he would dream of a moment when he could wrap his metal hand around Karpov’s neck, could strap him down like they had done to Bucky so many times, to see the roles reversed. And here they were.

“Does anyone know he’s here?” he asks, voice low as his grip on the gun tightens.

Tony shakes his head. “It’s just you and me. Rhodey didn’t ask,” he says, both sets of their eyes the restrained man. “I read the files. I know he’s the one responsible for my parents’ deaths. But I figured I would give you the option first.”

Bucky watches Karpov’s eyes dart to the gun in his hand and begins to struggle against the heavy restraints. “How easy is it to get rid of a body around here?” he asks, heart beating slow and heavy in his chest.

“Very.”

He turns to the shorter man, eyes dark as he says, “Can you leave? I want to talk to him alone.”

Nodding, Stark points to the door on the cell and says, “It’s biometrics are locked on you and me, so it’ll open when you pull. Try not to make a mess.”

Bucky watches him leave, the heavy door closing behind him, leaving him and Karpov alone.

He pulls open the door to the cell, the lock clicking open when his skin touches the handle. The Russian begins to struggle more violently in the chair as Bucky closes the door softly. His dress shoes don’t make a single sound as he circles the chair quietly, just watching the Hydra agent squirm. Karpov’s eyes are wide with defiance, masking his fear as Bucky crouches down in front of him.

“Surprised to see me?” he asks in Russian, voice dark as he taps the butt of the gun against his knee. “I’m sure you went into hiding after you saw the news about Pierce. Knew that they’d come for you eventually unless you disappeared.”

Karpov snarls something, muffled behind the mask and Bucky doesn’t need to know the words to tell his intent.

“I should take you apart piece by piece,” he growls quietly, his chest aching with all the memories of the horrors he was put through. “Pull everything good out of your body and leave you with nothing, just like you did to me. I remember them commending you for going above and beyond your orders when it came to keeping me controlled. I remember you using me for training the other Winter Soldiers. A human punching bag. That’s all I was to you, wasn’t it? Something to be used. Something to be controlled.”

The Russian makes a spitting sound behind the mask and Bucky’s blood boils.

“I am James Buchanan Barnes, the son of Abel and Johanna Barnes. I have friends who have stood by my side,” he says, circling the man again, his finger on the trigger. “I have a man who loves me despite what’s been done to me. He loved me before you were alive and he’ll love me long after your existence has been wiped out.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Karpov watching the gun, bracing himself for what he knows is coming.

“I am a good person. I always have been,” he continues as his arm tenses, muscles contracting around the gun as he aims it at the Hydra agent. Karpov closes his eyes as Bucky points the sight at center mass, just like he was trained to.

“My name is _Bucky Barnes._ ”

He fires all nine rounds in succession, the bullets lodging themselves into the cement on the floor between the Russian’s feet.

Karpov opens his eyes, breathing heavily through his nose as Bucky leans in close. He can see the terror in the other man’s eyes, his life having just flashed before his eyes, as Bucky says determinately, “And I am _not_ a _weapon_.”

The gun clatters to the floor as it falls from his hand.

Bucky pulls the door to the cell open, walking out without a second glance back. He pushes the metal door to find Tony pacing on the other side. The younger man looks up at him and then back at Karpov in the room, surprise seeping into his dark expression. “I _have_ to choose to be the bigger man,” he says, his shoulders relaxing slightly. “Otherwise I’m no better than he is.”

Tony nods, putting his hand on the door as he says, “Don’t worry about him, then. I’ll make sure he’s turned over to the proper authorities. I’m pretty sure you’ve got a party to get to.”

Meeting the younger man’s gaze, Bucky realizes that maybe the carnage between each other has a silver lining, the conclusion that violence only leads to more violence. That they would have to rise above it to be the men they deserved to be.

“Thank you, Tony,” he mutters, offering a thin smile. Stark returns it and disappears into the room, closing the door behind him.

Bucky takes the elevator back up to Steve’s floor, their floor, and the moment the doors open, he sees Steve pacing in the hallway. His expression softens when he sees Steve’s slightly frazzled appearance, the way his hands twist and smooth his hair down until he sees Bucky and freezes. “Oh my god, where were you? Are you okay?” he asks, striding over quickly to the elevator. “I’ve been waiting for you for almost half an hour.”

Reaching out his hand, Bucky puts it carefully on the side of the blond’s face. “Breathe. I just had to take care of something. It’s fine now, okay?” He kisses Steve gently and murmurs, “Let’s go upstairs.”

Steve nearly crushes his hand in the elevator on the ride up, Bucky smoothing his thumb over their intertwined fingers.

The doors of the elevator open and they can already hear big band music playing. Steve gives him a look and he can’t help but laugh. “ _Stop_ , this is going to be fun. Just like the good old days. Just try and relax.” He tries to step out of the elevator, but Steve pulls him back, letting go of his hands to grab either side of his face. He kisses Bucky deeply this time, grounding both of them in the moment.

“I _love_ you,” Steve murmurs into his mouth, eyes closed, body pressed against his. “ _So_ much.”

Bucky holds on to this moment, not their first, but just one of many that has helped begin to rebuild who he is. It’s an ongoing progression, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad now. Growth is growth.

They hold each other’s hands tight as they walk out into the common room, smiles bright amid the nearly four dozen cheering faces. There’s a banner hovering in the middle of the room that reads ‘ _Congratulations Steve and James‘_  and he laughs when he sees ‘ _Bucky_ ’ scribbled in the bottom corner in Clint’s sloppy handwriting.

It’s all a blur of faces and hugs, Pepper enveloping him tightly in her arms as Sam puts Steve in a headlock. There’s laughing and shaking hands and it’s good. They cut a cake and Bucky manages to dodge the piece Steve shoves at him, catching a smear of frosting on the blond’s chin. Steve looks at him with such love and adoration that Bucky thinks his chest is just going to burst.

Halfway through the party, Natasha grabs him by the arm, raising her voice over the music as she says, “C’mere, Barnes. We brought a special guest!”

He furrows his brow but lets her drag him through the crowd toward the couches where he sees a swath of white curls cascading down from a woman in a wheelchair. She has an oxygen tube connected to a tank on the back of her wheelchair and there’s something so familiar about her smile.

His heart stops. “Leah?”

Her smile spreads wide as tears come to her eyes. “I’ve missed you so much, Jamie,” she croaks, quiet voice nearly drowned out by the music.

Bucky drops to his knees in front of his sister and takes her thin, wrinkled hands in his. “I’m... I’m sorry I didn’t come visit, yeledah. I was so scared for you to see me after all this time, after what happened to me. I’m so glad you’re here,” he says, and he’s not sure when the tears started running down his own face.

Leah pulls on his arm and Bucky wraps his arm around her shoulders, burying his face in the crook of her neck. She smooths his hair down just like she used to do and says, “We missed you so much. _All_ of us did.”

He pulls away and wipes his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Have you talked to Steve yet? Can you believe it was him that I was waiting for? All these years?”

She smiles brightly, her eyes lighting up through her illness, and there’s a joy in the deep pools of blue, like she’s never been more proud of him. “If it had to be anyone, I’m glad it’s Steve. I always liked him better than all those girls you brought around,” she says, the trademark Barnes smirk pulling at her lips.

Pushing himself to his feet, he takes Leah’s hand gently, her caretaker pushing her wheelchair as he leads them through the party.

Steve is standing on the edge of some debate between Maria, Sharon, and Clint, the two women clearly winning whatever argument is raging on. Steve laughs deeply, one hand clutching his chest as Clint rolls his eyes and flips Maria off.

The music seems to drown out when he catches sight of Bucky, though. He watches the blond smile wide, eyes twinkling in the lights from the dance floor and Bucky has to catch his breath. It’s like the first smile Steve had ever graced him with, after he had run off the bullies that had been teasing him and they had sat on the curb, knees and lips bleeding.

Steve had grinned, broad and toothy, and said, _“My name’s Steve Rogers. We’re going to be best friends for a long, long time. Or forever. Whichever comes first.”_

Bucky had been so engrossed in his big blue eyes to do anything other than mumble dumbly, _“Of course we are.”_

Look at them now.

They weren’t the same kids that sat on the curb in Brooklyn decades ago, but Bucky isn’t sure he would want to go back. He had Steve and Steve had him, in whatever way and state they existed in.

Then. Now. Forever.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! I have a couple flashback one-shots expanding this verse that I’m excited to post in time!
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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